


Fists Up

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teddy hasn’t decided yet, has no idea what he wants in the broad sense of this being his life, his entire life, that he is changing, that they’re changing. Right now, he won’t deny the idea is appealing, in an electric way. To go from being entirely alone to being with both of them? It’s incredible that it’s even a possibility. But in the long term? It’s not just the press, the possibility of being found out. It’s the idea of handing James the ability to shatter him again, of giving Lily—mad, ridiculous, absolutely insane—that same power. Of giving it to them both at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fists Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [with_the_monsters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_the_monsters/gifts).



> Ages and ages and ages ago, Ellie (with_the_monsters) mentioned James/Lily/Teddy as a relationship in a post on Tumblr. I saw her post, thought, I'd like to read that, and then thought, no, I'd really like to _write_ that. So I, being so young and so naive, decided to try to tackle it. 
> 
> Ages and ages and ages passed, and I'm finally posting this. It does involve sibling incest (obviously). It does involve a polyamorous relationship. It does not deal particularly well with the question of morality. If incest or threesomes bother you, I'd recommend staying far away from this story. Also, I feel I should warn you that this is not porny. Like, at all.
> 
> The section breaks are quotes from "Dirty Valentine" by Richard Siken. The trajectory of that poem does not have much to do with the trajectory of this story. There's angst here, but not Siken levels. 
> 
> All of that said, I really hope that you enjoy this.

 

  
there are so many things I’m not allowed to tell you — Lily

Lily asks the Hat to choose for her. Her father had given her a speech before she came to Hogwarts, had told her that it was her choice. Free will, blah blah blah. Al grabbed her hand when she was about to wander into another car of the Hogwarts Express, had said, voice soft, “You can pick, okay? Just pick which one you want. It listens to you, I promise.” And she’d narrowed her eyes at his gold and red tie and pulled her hand from his. 

With the Hat on her head, she thinks,  _Where do I belong?_  and the Hat doesn't even hesitate, doesn't have the decency to speak to her, just shouts out, "Slytherin," like it isn't creating a good two months' worth of gossip with one word. 

Lily stands, sets the Hat on the stool, turns to look at Gryffindor. The students—her family, her brothers and so many of her cousins—just _stare_. And then James half stands, like he's going to do something, and Lily turns on her heel and walks toward Slytherin. The hall is silent. It stays silent until she sits at the very center of the table, beside the Bloody Baron and across from Reisen Zabini. As soon as she reaches across the table to shake Zabini's hand everyone starts talking.

They're all talking about her. She decides she does not give a damn.

-

The first time Lily gets drunk, she is outrageously happy. Everything is brighter, warmer, funnier. Ris is saying something, something about Quentin Longbottom and the giant squid, and it’s disgusting, it’s filthy, and Lily is hanging off of her in the middle of a room of cackling Slytherins, laughing like the rest, a few strands of Ris’s dark hair catching in her open mouth. The warmth of firewhisky is just holding her up, making her buoyant. She is fourteen and her best friend is a bloody queen; her best friend holds court like no one else.

Lily tells her this, later, after the alcohol has left her feeling soft and tired, her eyes gritty with smeared makeup. A sixth year has passed out with his head in her lap. She plays with his hair, pulling at curls and watching them loop in close to his scalp again. Eliot Nott, completely at her mercy. It’s a feeling she could get used to.

With her fingers woven into Eliot’s hair she tells Ris, “You are a queen, you know?”

Ris laughs and pushes to her feet, resting one hand on Lily’s shoulder as she catches her balance. “They only listen to me because I’ve got you, Potter,” she says, and she means it, is the thing. It’s absurd, because Lily is a Potter, but she’s the least of them. Lily is a Slytherin to her bones, to the marrow in them; Potter is a surface trait. The press has been scratching at it for years, holding her up to her father and brothers and mother—who’s not even a Potter, not by blood—and still finding her lacking. Less than them, all over. 

“Don’t look like that.” Ris pulls a face, a poor imitation of Lily’s, her lower lip sticking out and her nose scrunching up. “We all know you’re better than your name.”

Lily rolls her eyes and digs her fingers into Eliot’s scalp a little. He lets out a rough breath in his sleep, his mouth opening on the bend of Lily’s jean-clad knee. “You just mean I’m not a Potter at all,” she says, and Ris shakes her head immediately. 

“Stop being so fucking melodramatic. You’re ruthless, Lily. We love you for it.” 

Lily falls back onto the rug covering the stone floor of the common room, closes her eyes against the hazy spin of the room. “I’m really glad the Hat put me here.” 

Ris doesn’t respond. Lily thinks she may have disappeared back into their dormitory. It doesn’t matter; she’s got her hands full of Eliot Nott’s hair and a whole castle overhead.

-

The last night of Lily's fourth year, she and Ris and Hugo and a few others requisition a Charms clasroom for a game of drunken Exploding Snap. Hugo kicks her shin when she's about halfway into her overfull glass of firewhisky. When she looks up, he jerks his chin toward the doorway.

She turns to see James leaning against the doorjamb. Sober and staring, eyes bright and lips rolled together. 

“Want to join?” Ris offers. James shakes his head. 

“Want Lily?” Hugo offers. 

Lily sticks her tongue out at Hugo and shoves her cards facedown across the surface of the desk toward him. They spit sparks as she stands to meet James. He steps back into the corridor when she nears him. 

“What’s up?” she asks, trying to keep her voice soft. There’s something off about him, despite his apparent lucidity. He seems like he's barely there.  

He leads her fully into the corridor. He’s just staring at her. She steps closer, lifts her chin so she can meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?"

“Nothing, nothing.” He rubs a hand down his face, fingertips catching in the corners of his eyes. “Just, everything’s different.” 

“Not really. You're just leaving, that's all. You're the same. Everyone's the same, you just won't have to go to classes anymore."

 “Yes, but—you're still here. And I'm not going to be. That's different."

 “So? It's not like anything will change for us. It's not like I'm stuck here, it's not like you can't come visit." Lily can be solid ground, for James if for no one else.

 “Not forever. Things won't be the same forever,” James tells her, and Lily reaches out. She grabs onto one of his hands and squeezes tight. 

“You can depend on me. Not everyone else,” she admits, “but _me_? I’m here, James. I am. You know I am.” 

He disentangles their fingers. 

“For now,” he repeats. “Just wait.” 

He leaves her in the corridor. She waits a few minutes, and then she returns to her friends. They don’t say anything.

She doesn't need to do anything. James is a live wire. He’ll be fine in the morning. 

-

When Lorcan Scamander wins a cottage on Skye in a high stakes Gobstones tournament, he sends Hugo an owl and invites him and whomever he wants to stay in August. Every August. All the Augusts. That’s word-for-word how the letter goes. Hugo shoves it into Lily’s porridge on a Sunday in April of their sixth year, grin infectious.

"August in the Hebrides?” he asks, pushing her over on the bench so he can fit next to her. “You in?”

“Is Lysander staying there too?” Lily skims the letter and passes it across the table to Ris. Hugo takes Lily’s coffee. She elbows him but doesn’t bother trying to get it back. 

“Probably, I don’t know. Send owls to Al and James, make sure they get time off, yeah? And Eliot, if you want. And Ris, who’re you seeing now?” 

Ris has folded the letter into a paper airplane, and she directs it across the table with a tap of her wand. It hits Hugo in the forehead and falls to his lap. He picks it up and smooths it out. “I am not seeing anyone, but I might invite Scorpius. Also your sister, because you’re an ass if you think you’ll keep her out. And Louis.” Ris’s smile comes slowly. Lily throws a leftover crust at her.

“Don’t be gross.”

“Don’t invite Rose,” Hugo whines. “She’s no fun.”

“Everyone loves Rose, don’t be stupid.” Lily elbows Hugo. “You just don’t want her to give Lorcan a hard time.”

“You _know_ she will.”

Lily shrugs. “Someone should.” 

“He’s invited me for _all the Augusts_ ,” Hugo sighs.

Ris snorts out a laugh as Lily reaches as if to pinch one of Hugo’s freckled cheeks, but he jumps up from the bench and is five feet away before her fingers even brush him.

“Just for that I’m inviting Lupin,” he calls from fifteen feet. Lily could still get a good hex at him from this distance, but the professors’ table is full and she can feel Professor Longbottom’s gaze from here.

Besides, “You do that. Teddy won’t come, you know he won’t. He’s too dignified. And busy.”

“We’ll see.” Hugo has to shout the words, and they don’t worry Lily. She hasn’t seen Teddy outside of a function organized by her father in more than two years, and when he does show at family gatherings he rarely stays long. Not that she’s keeping track. Just, Teddy has this way of smiling that crinkles up his eyes and this full-bodied laugh that Lily thought about for a week almost nonstop the last time she saw him and, just, Hugo is a legitimate bastard. 

“My family’s the worst,” she tells Ris. 

“I like them.” Ris kicks Lily’s shin under the table and adds, “But you know Lupin won’t come. Hanging out with a bunch of teenagers? That’s totally not his idea of a good time.” 

No, because Lily is pretty sure Teddy spends his free time sitting in circles discussing history and advances in magical theory, smoking a pipe and drinking Ogden’s Old from actual whisky tumblers. Because Teddy could wear a tweed jacket and she would still fall over herself for him, and so would everyone else. 

Teddy’s not important, though, because Teddy is so unattainable it’s ridiculous. And he’s too perfect. And he wouldn’t fit her right, she knows this, no matter what Ris says. 

- 

Teddy doesn’t come, but everyone else manages at least a week throughout August, and Lily and Ris and Hugo spend an entire four beautiful weeks hanging around Lorcan and Lysander’s cottage, making a general mess of the place. If there were neighbors Lily’s sure they’d have been at the door with pitchforks and torches by the end of the first week, but the cottage is a tiny white thing settled on an outcropping of rock on the opposite side of the island from the bridge. Enough land surrounds them to create a sound barrier. 

The end of August comes too fast. It rolls in heavy and grey, the long days stretching monochrome and with a taste of preemptive nostalgia. Hugo and Lorcan spend _hours_ staring at each other from the two broken chairs crowded onto the front porch, and Ris goes down to the village every night the last week to drink with muggles. Lily doesn’t go with her, because James is there that week and Ris declared him her wingman before he even arrived. Mostly Lily spends her evenings down on the rocks near the waves, her bare feet toughened from the recent weeks, from a childhood spent chasing after her brothers on similar beaches, from her favorite devastating heels. 

“Hey.” 

It’s their last night on Skye and the moon is full; Lily was planning on sitting watching it wash over the water the whole night. She wasn’t expecting James to find her, or even to come looking for her, and he’s drunk and sloppy, from the way he’s stumbling over the stones. 

“Hi.” She shifts so he can sit. He falls, throws an arm over her shoulders to steady himself. He doesn’t move it once he’s sitting upright, and Lily doesn’t make an effort to shrug it off. 

“Ris says,” James begins, words loud and harsh and a little slurred, breath a pulse of firewhisky at her cheek, “that you and Eliot Nott are over. Is this true? Do I need to get Al to punch him?” 

“Why Al? Why not you?” Lily shoves her elbow back so it pushes into James’s side. There’s no force behind it, and James doesn’t shift away, just lets her elbow rest as another point of contact between them. 

“I might not do it for the right reasons.” It’s a pretend whisper, maybe even an attempt at one, but James is too drunk to make his voice soft. Lily feels a knot tighten in her stomach. She wants to be drunk and open the way James is. She wants this conversation to happen—if it has to happen at all—easily. She doesn’t want to have to be the one with a moral compass, here, with some sense of the harm they could do. 

“We weren’t ever anything serious, me and Nott.” This should not feel like an explanation or an apology, like something James deserves, but Lily knows it is. 

“You didn’t love him?” The words are rough, a little mocking. 

“No.” It’s the most honest word in the world. “The only reason we’ve stopped seeing each other is because he’s found somebody he actually likes.” 

“Of course he liked you.” James rests his head against Lily’s, strands of his hair pressing soft against her forehead. “Everyone does.” 

“I meant someone he actually _likes_ like he’d live with her and maybe marry her someday likes.” 

“Are you so sure he didn’t want that with you?” 

“Well, I sure as hell never wanted that with him.” 

James lets out a breath. “Do you want that with anyone?” 

Lily twists away from him and shoves him. He topples to the ground, a mess of limbs and tripped-over swear words. 

“James, you know me.” Lily stands over him as he gives up righting himself and lies there, looking up at her. The moon’s bright enough to shed shadows. “You know me.” 

“Yeah.” He looks like he’s going to say something else, something big and important and something that Lily knows in every cell, something that she cannot hear tonight, because she cannot bear to be the one to break this. And she’s sober, so she’d have to. 

She steps over James, shooting a mild hex back when his hand tries to catch around her ankle, and climbs up to the cottage. 

- 

In October, Professor Longbottom tells Lily in no uncertain terms that if he catches her drunk and wandering the corridors one more time, he will have no choice but to call in her parents. 

To be honest, Lily is surprised that he hasn’t spoken to her parents yet. She doesn’t think he’s afraid of them—well, maybe of her mother, but almost everyone, Lily included, is terrified of Ginny—and so the only possible reason for his continued silence on her behalf is that he trusts her to straighten herself out. That is a serious thought. One that Lily will give due consideration when she is not stumbling drunk somewhere between the Gryffindor and Slytherin common rooms. 

Professor Longbottom squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Would you prefer that I ask Hugo or Miss Parkinson to come collect you?” 

He’s asking her whether either of them is sober at the moment. Lily’s fairly certain that Ris has snuck out to Hogsmeade and that Hugo is writing a very weepy letter to Lorcan, because that is what he was doing when she left him, with a promise to stop him from reaching the owlery in the morning to send it. 

“I can make it on my own.” She grins at her father’s old friend and holds out her hand, pinky extend. “Pinky swear.” 

Professor Longbottom groans. “If I had known Harry’s kids were going to be such a hassle,” he mumbles, gripping her shoulder and turning her around. “This way, Miss Potter.” 

“What would you have done?” Lily asks as they start the descent down the main staircase. Lily is very glad Professor Longbottom is there, because if he weren’t she’s pretty sure she’d have fallen at least twice. And possibly hit the trick step on the way down, even though she _knows_ exactly where that one is. 

“Hmm?” 

“If you had known that we were all going to be so much trouble. What would you have done differently?” 

“Oh.” Professor Longbottom chuckles. “Harry would have never made it through school without me. There are so very many things I could have done differently, Miss Potter.” 

“Rude,” Lily gasps. 

Professor Longbottom rubs a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, you’re right. That was unprofessional.”

“You weren’t always our professor.” Lily shrugs, stumbles, and catches herself against a painting, the occupants of which totter in their frame and swear after her as she continues on. 

“No, I wasn’t. Which is why I haven’t called your parents yet. I know your family, Lily. I know that whatever’s going on with you will not last long. You’ll sort it out.” They stop outside the entrance to Slytherin. “Won’t you?” 

Lily cocks her head and looks up at him. “I suppose.” 

“If you need help with it,” he offers, but Lily’s already shaking her head. 

“Thank you,” and she means it. 

“One more time, though, Lil, and I’ll have no choice, you understand?”

“Understood.” She salutes him. He waits until she steps inside the common room to leave. 

- 

Lily gets terribly drunk the next weekend, but she waits until she is holed up in the shrieking shack to do so. She sits in the corner of the dusty living room and drinks and drinks until she can barely feel her tongue, and then she pulls out her wand, squeezes her eyes shut, and attempts to Disapparate. 

It does not go very well. She winds up halfway across the room, stumbling into the torn-up sofa arm. “Well, fuck.” She squeezes her wand tighter, tries again, and ends up in the tunnel. Which is not at all ideal. 

She climbs through the roots and cobwebs back into the shrieking shack, shuts her eyes, and thinks of a day two summers ago when she and James and Albus had flown their brooms to the peak of a hill and picnicked on stolen baguettes and champagne. Her patronus slides silver from the end of her wand, a bright slippery dragon, and burns through the greasy glass of the window like air. 

Lily drinks some more while she waits for her patronus to bring her brother to her. 

“Shit, Lil.” James appears in front of her with a pop. He’s not drunk, she’s happy to see. He looks like her patronus dragged him out of bed; he’s wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt that’s been thrown on backwards. The tag is sticking out and brushing adorably against the skin of his throat. “What’re you doing?” 

She tilts her head to look up at him. “Come here,” she demands. 

He sinks down slowly. He rocks back on his heels, hands flat in the dust on the floor. “What’re you doing?” The question is soft this time. 

“Turning the tables.” 

He shakes his head, like he doesn’t understand. Like he doesn’t remember. But Lily knows he does, because they haven’t been alone together since August, and she knows he’s planned it that way. He’s been avoiding her, which James doesn’t usually do. 

“Last time,” she explains, trying to enunciate the words, to make him understand, “you were drunk and I wasn’t, and I didn’t want to be the one to do it. But now I’m drunk and you’re not and I want to know if you’ll react differently from me.” 

He just looks at her. He just stares, his eyes a little bloodshot, his lip between his teeth, his hands on the floor. Still back on his heels, not moving an inch toward her. 

“I want to _know_ ,” she repeats, “will you do what I did?” 

“What’s the other option?” he asks finally. “Is there another option? Don’t I have to just walk away?” But even as he’s asking it Lily knows he won’t. James won’t leave her alone and drunk; it’s not in his nature the way it’s in hers. He’s not ruthless. 

But there’s more than one other way this could go. He could take her back to school, hand her off to be somebody else’s drunken mess. She doesn’t think he will, but she’s pushing a boundary, and it could easily snap back and land her brokenhearted on her ass. 

Lily sits, swings her bottle around in one hand, watches the way the remaining whisky sloshes against the sides. “What did you expect me to do? At the end of the summer, what did you expect me to do?” 

“What you did.” James is watching the whisky too. 

“Okay.” Lily attempts to tip back another gulp, but James reaches out and takes the bottle from her hand. Lily lets him. “What did you want me to do?” 

James sets the bottle on the ground and shakes his head. Lily reaches out and traces one finger through the lines between his eyebrows to the tip of his nose. She keeps it there. He doesn’t move. “I don’t know, Lil. I really don’t. Where would we be now if you had done—if you had let me keep going?” 

“We wouldn’t be happy,” she admits, “because we’d be guilty. But we’d be better. Wouldn’t we be better? I think we’d be better.” 

“You’re not okay, are you.” 

“You’re not, either.” She drops her finger and crawls forward until their noses are centimeters apart. She could kiss him so easily. 

It would just be two new bits of skin touching. That’s all it would be. 

“Lily,” James says, but he doesn’t say stop, and he doesn’t mean it, either. 

And so she kisses him. 

- 

“Where have you been lately?” Ris sits down on the arm of the chair Lily's occupying in front of the Slytherin’s fire one evening early in November. Lily shifts so Ris can slide onto the seat beside her.

“Around.” Lily offers Ris the open box of Bertie Bott’s she’s been eating while contemplating her Charms reading. 

“You haven’t, though. I haven’t seen you outside of classes in ages. You haven’t been in Hogsmeade on weekends, and Hugo says he hasn’t seen you at any parties here. You haven’t been in the library, have you?” 

“Sometimes,” Lily hedges. 

“We can have secrets.” Ris takes the box of Bertie Bott’s from Lily’s hand and tips it back into her mouth. She makes a face as she chews, then swallows loudly. “It’s just that I got an owl from my mum’s boyfriend today.” 

“Oh.” Lily rubs at her mouth. She tries to think of what Frank—a journalist from the States, although the label journalist is used incredibly loosely when applied to him—could have seen. 

“He says there’ve been reports—accompanied by pictures—of you out in London these last few weeks. You sneaking out of school isn’t a big deal, Lil,” Ris drops the empty box in Lily’s lap and pushes herself from where she’s wedged between Lily and the arm of the chair, “but you know the press will turn it into something. I don’t care what you’re doing there,” she might, but she’s lying well if she does, “but just be more careful, okay?” 

“Is Frank?” Lily begins, not caring to tell Ris that the most the photographs will show is her buying two coffees on a Saturday morning, or grabbing carryout from an Indian restaurant. 

“He’s managed to keep them from being printed so far. I think as long as there aren’t more, he’s going to be able to convince everyone that it’s not worth it. I believe his exact words were, ‘don’t warn her you’re watching, and then she’ll do something stupid and there will be galleons and galleons to be made,’ but then he told me to warn you, so apparently he’s not as much of an ass as I originally thought.” She shrugs. “Just don’t be dumb and you’ll be okay, is the point of this conversation.” 

“Thanks.” Lily slides her Charms book back into her lap. “You’re the best.” Her tone is insincere, but Ris just grins. 

“I really am, though, you’ll see.” And then she turns and leaves the common room, and Lily tries unsuccessfully to focus on Charms for the rest of the evening. 

- 

James lets a flat on the upper floor of an old muggle woman’s townhouse. There’s a back stair that lets out into the alley behind the row of brick houses so they don’t have to go into the woman’s house at all, and she seems perfectly oblivious to the loud noises that sometimes accompany life in the magical world. Lily’s regular Apparations into the middle of James’s living room, with their corresponding cracks, never seem to cause the woman any upheaval at all. 

Lily hadn’t spent much time at James’s before, because it is small and old, and he’s furnished it with pieces inherited from everyone in their family. There’s a sofa supported by a set of moldy encyclopedias because Uncle George once blew the leg off while experimenting with a water cannon intended for sale at the joke shop; his bed is this old wrought iron thing that would be absolutely stunning in an imposing sort of way if Uncle Ron had not somehow turned the whole frame this awful yellow color; his few dishes and saucepans are an amalgamation from everyone, including a kettle from Grandma Molly with a hole in the side. Before, Lily had never had much use for James’s place, and had always orchestrated meet-ups at pubs or the house Al shares with Rose and Scorpius. 

Lately, though, she’s fallen a little in love with the way the sofa rocks if you sit on the cushion to the left; the color of the bed is endearing; the way James insists on using kettle and continuously burns himself on boiling water is comforting. 

“You’re going to have to get the coffee from now on,” Lily tells him in November. 

“Yeah?” James looks up from the book he’s reading and raises his eyebrows at her. “Why’s that?” 

“I have, apparently, been spotted. Ris’s mum’s boyfriend’s gotten some pictures of me in London. They want to start up rumors about what shenanigans I could be getting up to here, when I should be in school.” She perches on the edge of the cushion beside James. The sofa stays steady. 

“Shenanigans?” James laughs, mock horrified. “Whatever could you get up to?” 

Lily grins and tackles him. The sofa rocks dangerously but does not fall over. 

- 

“Are you worried?” 

They’re lying tangled together in bed, and Lily has her fingers in James’s hair. She tugs at his question. 

“I guess it’d be stupid not to be. But we’re careful.” 

James presses a kiss to Lily’s chest, right over her heart, and then moves up to her lips. “Yeah. And we’re better.”

She digs her nails into his shoulders. “So much better,” she says into his mouth. 

- 

“What is going on with you two?” 

James and Lily glance at each other. Albus has a bottle of beer in front of him, but he’s barely touched it. They’re sitting on the floor of Lily’s bedroom at home, playing a late night game of Rummy in the light from their wands. It’s Christmas Eve, their parents have been asleep for hours. 

Lily is winning by a lot. She thinks that might be why Albus has dropped his question right now; he’s the sorest loser she knows, and her family is full of them. 

“Nothing’s going on with us.” They have been perfect since they got home the day before. They slept in separate beds and haven’t had any quiet conversations away from their family; Lily hasn’t touched James since a hurried kiss in his flat after he picked her up from King’s Cross. 

“Bullshit. I know you guys.” 

“What do you mean?” James’s tone is a little hard-edged. 

“What do you think is going on?” She keeps her voice light. 

Albus looks from James to Lily, then looks down at the cards in his hand. “Plausible deniability,” he mutters, and then he shakes his head. 

“We’re a weird family,” he speaks to the cards in his hand, “we’re really fucking off, and that’s what the press has done to us but it’s us, too, I know that. This is—it’s different, but.” He shrugs. “I love you guys. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Don't fuck up.” 

Lily and James stare at him. 

“We’re not talking about it,” Albus puts a card down, “not ever.” 

“Deal,” Lily and James say in one breath, and Lily’s never felt luckier. 

- 

“What do we have to hide from each other anymore?” Lily’s sitting on one of James’s mismatched kitchen chairs, wearing one of his t-shirts, her bare legs stretched in front of her so her feet rest in his lap. He’s drinking coffee and tracing a line up the arch of her right foot. It tickles but she doesn’t draw back. She may have things to be ashamed of, but James can know them, if he wants to. 

“Nothing, I guess.” James sounds hesitant. 

“Then do you have anything you want to know?” 

James sets his coffee cup down and wraps his around Lily’s ankles, thumbs brushing where the bones jut. She shivers, nearly imperceptible. 

“When did you know about us?” 

Lily tilts her head back. “I think, I mean. I’ve always known we weren’t normal. We were too close by far, but Albus was in on that, too. Maybe the summer before last? When we went to visit Dom alone, and that whole ride down and back all the muggles thought we were together, you could tell and I could tell, and I didn’t care at all.” She bites her lip as she looks at him. “I don’t think you did, either.” 

“I didn’t,” he confirms. He doesn’t ask another question, just waits, hands still on her ankles. 

Lily knows he’s expecting her to give his question back to him, but she won’t. She knows he’s known for longer, and that’s a tender thing, something she’d rather not look at too closely. “Who else have you been with?” she asks instead. 

His grip tightens. He looks down at her legs. “No one since school.” That surprises her, but she guesses it shouldn’t. James has always flown under the radar of the press when it comes to relationships and hook-ups—even Lily and Eliot had been featured in some society pages over the last two years—but it had never occurred to Lily that maybe he’s flown under the radar because he’s not actually involved with anyone. 

“And in school?” Lily prompts. James’s hands don’t let go, but they do loosen. He still won’t look at her. 

“A few people, at parties. Nobody important.” 

She knows it’s mean of her, but she's never been kind. “I thought we didn’t have anything to hide from each other anymore.” 

“You don’t need to know this.” James’s voice is almost a plea. “I don’t know who you’ve been with, I don’t want to.” 

“You know who I’ve been with,” Lily tells him. “You and Eliot, that’s it.” 

The confession makes James look at her in surprise. “No one else?” 

She shrugs. “The press wants to make it seem like I’m entrenched in some sort of constant scandal. I don’t—Eliot filled a gap, I didn’t need anything else. And now, there’s you.” 

James lifts her feet from his lap and stands. He goes over to the sink and leans over it to look out the small window at the flat across from his, partially obscured by dampness trapped between the panes. “Cleo Zabini,” he says to the window, “Anna Longbottom, Leah Finnegan,” he breathes out, “Samson,” he trails off. 

Lily’s nails are digging into her wrist. “Samson? Ris’s half-brother Samson?” 

“Gavin Thomas too.” 

“I,” Lily looks at the straight line of James’s shoulders, so tense under his t-shirt, “do you think it matters to me? I’m surprised I didn’t know, that’s all. Why didn’t you ever tell us?” 

“Albus knows.” James hasn’t turned around. 

That hurts a little. “Why not me?” 

“I wanted you to know.” James turns, eyes burning honest. “I wanted you to know, but only if you knew enough to ask.” 

Lily nods. “Why do you think it matters? Why would it matter at all?” 

“You’re angry,” he points out. 

“I’m upset that you didn’t tell me. But,” she stands and crosses the kitchen to him, presses her forehead between his shoulder blades, wraps her arms around him, “I would have been upset the same way if you told me a year ago. It’s not about us as us, it’s about us as—you know, I’ve always thought we were closer to each other than we were to anyone else. And it’s not about me, is it? You’re not all about me. Who you like—that’s not something you actually need to explain.” She shakes her head against him. “I just need to know that we’re as close as I’ve always thought we are.” 

“We are,” James says, “obviously we are. It never—I never wanted—I don’t know, Lil, it just seemed like a strange thing to have to sit you down to tell you. There was so much else—I don’t know.” 

She kisses the back of his neck, right above his shirt collar. “Thanks for telling me now,” and she knows she’ll stew over this later, over the secrets they’re still hiding from each other, but she doesn’t want to now. Now it’s Sunday afternoon and she needs to go back to Hogwarts soon and she does love him. That’s all there is now. That’s it. 

-

It’s the end of Easter hols, so technically Lily is allowed to be wherever the fuck she wants. Still, she tenses when she hears her name under the rumble of voices in the muggle coffee shop. 

She’s sitting in a chair facing the window. It’s rainy and chilly out, and the few people outside are scurrying past beneath umbrellas. She glances over her shoulder at the sound of her name, pitched low and with just enough of a question in it to catch her attention. 

Teddy Lupin is standing behind her chair, a cardboard cup in his hand. He’s wearing a maroon jumper and jeans with a hole in one knee, his hair is its ordinary brown, warm and familiar. His eyes, though, are darker than she remembers them—but then, Lily hasn’t seen Teddy in a long time, and her memory could be playing tricks on her. Or he’s changed his eye color for some reason; he always used to do that, change little things about himself. It fascinated and worried Lily in equal parts when she was younger, the fact that she could never be sure that the Teddy she was seeing was Teddy as he actually looked.

“It is you.” A grin breaks Teddy’s face. “I haven’t seen you in ages. What’re you doing here?” 

He drops into the chair beside her, shifting her cardigan and school jacket as he does so. She tries not to let her surprise show on her face. He’s been reserved around her the last few years; this friendly and familiar Teddy is more reminiscent of her first few years at Hogwarts. 

“I was visiting James. Easter holidays, you know?” She’s out now because James was called in to work, something about some of the curses in the Gringotts vaults needing immediate troubleshooting, and after four days of barely leaving his flat she was dead tired of it. She’s got a Potions book in her lap, but she hadn’t been reading it. 

“Oh, yeah.” Teddy keeps shooting these awkward, short glances in her direction. “You’re in your last year, aren’t you?” The question seems superfluous—she thinks he knows this, but nods anyway. “What are you going to do in June?” 

Lily shakes her head. “That’s the worst question, Teddy. I have no idea. What have you been up to lately? How are you doing?” 

“I’m okay. Still working on researching the history of Defense spells. You know how your dad wanted our collection finished for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement’s 800th anniversary this May? Yeah, that’s not happening.” 

“He must be pleased.” 

“You know it’s dumb. Just a number, and what we’re doing is much more important. Researching spells has always been such a struggle—having a searchable and well-indexed database will make a significant difference.” 

Lily resists rolling her eyes. “You sound like Rose.” 

“Well, it is valuable.” 

“I know it is, I wasn’t saying it wasn’t. I was just saying, I know it is. I see Rose, she tells me how important it is. All the time.” 

Teddy blinks and starts to stand. Lily waves out a hand in the space between them. “I’m sorry,” she hurries, “I’m sorry. I’m just—we haven’t really talked lately, I’m sorry. I forget how to behave.” The real problem is that Teddy makes Lily feel like she’s fourteen again. Fourteen and inexperienced and so young. James anchors Lily. Teddy sends her reeling. 

Teddy settles back in the chair. “It’s okay,” he says, “I forget that I don’t really know what’s going on with you anymore. Your dad tells me some things but,” Teddy shrugs, “that’s all shit your distant relatives know, isn’t it?” 

Lily smiles. “Probably.” They sit in silence for a few minutes, and then she confesses, “I miss you, you know? We all do.” 

“Yeah. I miss you all too. I’ll try to be around more.” 

“We’d like that.” 

- 

She tells James that evening, lying facing him in his bed, “I saw Teddy today.” 

James stills, his hand resting on her cheek, fingers just touching the few strands of hair he’d reached out to brush away. “Oh?” 

“Yeah. He looks—I mean, he looks good.” She laughs a little self-deprecatingly. “But tired? I don’t know, we don’t really know him anymore, do we?” 

"No,” James agrees, “we don’t really.” 

“I told him we missed him.” Lily is trying to see James’s face in the dim light. He’s more stiff than normal, his voice not quite right. 

“Oh,” James says. “Did he say anything else?” 

“He said he’d try to be around more.” James rolls over, so his back is to her, and Lily reaches out, rests a hand on his bare shoulder. 

“James, what’s the matter? It’s just Teddy. You don’t— _it’s just Teddy_. We grew up with him.” 

“I—damn it, Lil.” James sits up and gets out of bed, starts pacing at the foot of it. The whole movement is a surge of motion and Lily is so confused by it, sitting with her arms around her knees and her back against the cold iron headboard, watching James move. She can’t say anything. 

“Do you remember right after I left school?” He asks finally. She nods. She remembers him coming home briefly, hanging out with her and Albus for a glorious week, and then disappearing to London, to stay with Molly, promising their parents he’d find a job. Which he had, eventually, his job at Gringotts, but not until it was nearly October and he’d had to ask Louis to pull some strings rather aggressively for him. James had spent the summer avoiding journalists and photographers, but causing enough havoc that their parents worried over him constantly. Lily and Albus had moved carefully around the house that summer. 

“You were a mess, from what I remember.” 

James lets out a rough laugh. “Yeah. I was. And—I went out a lot. I hung out with everyone from my year and the few years above us and I’m past it now but—I lied to you, Lily. When I said I hadn’t been with anyone since school.” 

Lily asks, very carefully, keeping her tone utterly even, “Why?” 

“I don’t know.” James runs his hands through his hair. It’s shadowed and sticking up. Lily wants very badly to have kept her mouth shut. 

“Because it was Teddy?” She’s not an idiot, the connection is obvious. But the thought—Lily’s jealous, the sour taste heaving in her gut, and she doesn’t know why. She can’t tell whether she’s jealous of Teddy for having James or James for having Teddy, but she’s pretty sure it’s the latter, in which case—in which case, she’s more of a mess than she already thought she was. 

“Because it was Teddy,” James confirms unnecessarily. “Not lately, but that summer, a couple of times, and then more often for a while. And he just stopped coming around family things and he stopped hanging around with us and I knew that was my fault and I didn’t want you to know that, because you always liked him, Lily, I knew you always liked him, and I didn’t want you to know that I had taken him from you.” 

Lily presses a hand to her stomach. “It’s fine, James.” 

“What do you mean it’s fine?” 

“I mean, it’s in the past, right? And if I didn’t have you,” Lily trails off. “I mean, it’s _Teddy_. Who wouldn’t go for him?” She tries so damn hard to keep her voice light, but James is standing there, knuckles white around the curls of the bedframe, and he’s staring at her. 

“Would you?” James asks, voice so tense, so stiff. “If he wanted you, would you?” 

“Not now, you idiot.” Lily moves to the end of the bed, kneels so her eyes are on level with James’s. “We’re together, remember.” 

“But would you want to?” James asks. 

Lily looks at him. She just looks, and then she leans in and kisses his ungiving lips. “I love you.” James doesn’t say anything. The closeness is getting uncomfortable, she can’t make out the expression on his face. “Wouldn’t you want to?” When he doesn’t say anything, she presses, “Why did you stop?” 

The answer should be obvious, should be as simple as James saying, “I didn’t love him,” but she knows it’s not that. 

“We were never going to be anything more than fuck buddies,” James says finally. “Like you and Nott.” 

“Except you love him.” 

James ducks his head. “It’s in the past.” He parrots her. 

“Okay.” Lily places both her hands on James’s shoulders, pulls him in for a kiss. He returns this one. “Okay,” Lily says, “come back to bed." 

 

 

I swallow your heart and it crawls / right out of my mouth — Teddy

It had happened because of Dominique. Because Dominique had seen James in the weeks since he left school and thought that his little crisis, his going crazy, was precious, endearing. Intriguing, because James was the Potter who seemed to play it closest to the line. Seemed to being the operative term, of course; everyone in the Potter-Weasley clan knew that James and Albus and Lily were one lit match from exploding. 

Dominique had wanted to go to the muggle club, because James was going to be at the muggle club, and she found him fascinating. And no one would go with her because everyone else had a sense of self-preservation. Everyone except for Teddy. If Teddy were a stronger person, he would wish that he had told Dominique, “No. You’re crazy. Go home and watch muggle reality shows,” but Teddy is not a stronger person, and as much as he knows that that night, that whole summer, and the nearly two years that followed, were a series of mistakes, he would not wish them away. 

James had been snogging some muggle asshole when they got there. Dominique had _squealed_ and Teddy had whirled, said something like, “Someone’s going to snap a picture of that. James is going to hate himself.” 

“Whatever,” Dom had shoved Teddy toward the bar, “get a drink, loosen up. James has done this before. He’s fine.” 

Teddy hadn’t followed Dom’s advice, though. He’d woven his way through the bodies on the dance floor and slid his hands along James’s waist, pulling him away from the muggle. He still remembers the heat of that first touch, a flush of warmth on his skin that made him feel crazy. 

James had sworn at him as he’d guided him from the dance floor and out through the teaming crowd at the door of the club, but he’d been too drunk to put up a good fight. They’d gone to get chips and then they’d gone to Teddy’s flat, and Teddy did not touch James, not that time, but only—and he admits this readily, if with a sick heaviness—because James had still been so drunk and he’d fallen asleep the second his head had hit the pillow. 

The next time he’d gone out, James had come to Teddy’s instead of going to Molly’s flat. He’d buzzed to be let up and then collapsed on the couch, said, “Molly told me if I came home drunk again she’d kick me out,” and then he fell asleep, right there. Teddy’d removed his shoes and tossed a blanket over him. 

The third time, the third time they’d run into each other outside of a pub. Teddy had had a little to drink and James was stone sober, and he’d looked at Teddy and said, “Oh, this is a nice change,” and then he’d led Teddy back to his flat, even though Teddy was not _that_ drunk, did not need to be taken care of, and James had pushed Teddy back onto his bed, had kissed into his mouth, and then—and then they became whatever the fuck they were. 

James had called them fuck buddies when he called it off, almost two years after he’d finished school, standing in Teddy’s flat and saying, “You’re avoiding the family and that’s not okay, you’ve been doing it for ages and if you don’t want us—if you don’t want this to be official or whatever, if you want this to just be fuck buddies until we call it quits, then fine, that’s fine, but I’m calling it quits now. Because I’m not going to let you have it limit your whole life. Go find somebody else, I’ll go find somebody else, and everything can be normal again, okay?” Teddy remembers the babble, the tense flow of James’s words, the way his hands were fisting at his sides the whole time he was talking—he remembers all that as clearly as he remembers the first time he touched James. 

He remembers how James had turned and left, as if he’d—as if him saying it was over meant it absolutely was. As if he’d rewound two years in a few run-on sentences, had erased feelings by denying them. 

And Teddy remembers how he had let him, because what else was he going to do? Tell James he wanted this to be real? He has and had no illusions about the mercy of the press. James dating someone eight years older than him, someone who’s been referred to throughout his life as a member of his family, a surrogate brother? The press would have painted the worst possible picture of their relationship. It would have ended, and it would have ended terribly. The way James had chosen to end it was easier, and so Teddy let him. 

But being normal around the Potters took work, and dealing with Harry was sometimes exhausting, and Teddy knows that, even a year later, he’s not marginally over James. 

And then he sees Lily in a coffee shop. 

She’s different, and it makes him realize how much he’s missed. Her hair is long and red and tangled, and she’s got a face like something murderous out of a fairytale, that’s all he can think of. She’s a witch, he reminds himself, and so she has every right to look like one. But her lips are chapped and she is tiny, like he could still pick her up and carry her, and she has a mark on her neck that he would bet any amount of money is a hickey. Lily has grown up and Teddy is floored at the sight of her. 

She has grown up and, as they talk, slow and stilted and with Lily cutting him off at every turn, he realizes that she has grown up hard. So hard. He wants, irrationally and stupidly, to soften every edge he touches during their brief interaction. 

He leaves her, her parting confession a bit of a bandage for the roughness of the rest of the conversation, and thinks that he has a serious Potter problem. He wonders what he’d think if he were to see Albus today. He hopes he wouldn’t want to dig under Albus’s exterior, too—Albus has long seemed the friendliest of the Potters, but Teddy has never felt comfortable with him the way he used to with Lily and James, and if his Potter infatuation stretched that far…well, he’d probably have to check himself into a mental institution. 

He probably should anyway. 

- 

He sees James in that same coffee shop the next month. He hasn’t been going there with the hope of running into either James or Lily, except that he almost definitely has. They make decent coffee, but it’s more expensive than his usual shop and is much farther out of his way. He’s assumed, however, that it’s near James’s flat, and so is embarrassingly pleased to see James waiting for his coffee one afternoon in late April. 

James has changed, too; he looks more put-together than Teddy remembers. He’s wearing glasses, a much more stylish pair than the ones he used to wear only for reading, and is talking with the girl behind the counter, waving his hands around to emphasize whatever point he’s making. She laughs at him, head back, and Teddy feels an illicit surge of jealousy at the sight. 

Teddy can’t go up to where he’s standing without making what will undoubtedly be an awkward conversation even more awkward, and so he waits in line, orders his coffee, and watches as James turns, his drink in hand, and starts toward the door. 

Teddy has his own coffee by this point—James would have gotten something sweet and frothy, while Teddy always gets filter coffee—and he calls, “James,” trying not to make the name sound like it’s as strangled as it feels. 

James hesitates by the door, and Teddy realizes that he had seen him already, must have been planning on ignoring him. But good manners win out, and James turns back, smile forced, tense at the corners. Teddy still knows him well enough to recognize his discomfort. 

“Hey.” James pushes the door open and holds it for Teddy. “Haven’t seen you in a while, how’ve you been?” 

“Okay. Busy.” They’re lingering outside of the building, causing a slight traffic jam. He doesn’t care much. “How about you?” 

“Good, thanks.” James glances over his shoulder. “Listen, I’ve got to run, big thing at the Bank today, but we should definitely catch up.” 

“We should. Are you free at all this week?” 

James’s eyes go wide, and Teddy knows he’s pushing, knows James does not want this. But it hadn’t all been in his head, what was between them, and James hadn’t wanted things to be awkward with the family which, well, James is a part of. And this is awkward. 

“Not for—not like that, James. It’s not like that. I just want to catch up.” 

James’s face relaxes, barely. “Yeah, sure. How about Thursday? Want to just meet here after dinner?” 

“Sure,” Teddy agrees, and James is out of his sight almost before the word is out of his mouth. 

He hadn’t known. He’d had no idea that what he and James had been had broken down so completely. They hadn’t been nearly this much of a mess at the end of it. 

- 

The coffee shop is mostly full when Teddy gets there late Thursday evening. There’s one empty table crammed into the corner near the door and no sign of James. Teddy gets a coffee and sits there, flipping through a history textbook he’d gotten off of Tully Smith at work. The book is dry and mostly unhelpful, and Teddy is deeply regretting having hauled it to the shop from his flat, particularly considering that it’s thick enough to earn him some strange looks—looks which turn interested once people get a look at his face. He should have put on his pig snout today, it would have certainly changed the intent of the looks he’s fielding. Shameful disgust is an emotion he prefers to lust, lately.

He’s staring at the rim of his coffee mug when James walks in. He comes over without ordering and pulls out the chair across from Teddy with an aggressive tug not at all suited to the narrow space the table is occupying. He nearly hits the back of the woman sitting behind them with an elbow, but drops into the seat with just enough grace to avoid it. 

“Sorry I’m so late; dinner ran over.” 

“Were you at home?” Teddy shuts the book slowly, faking like he’s reluctant to have been interrupted. James’s attitude is so immediately abrupt that Teddy is already regretting having approached him the other day. The stretch of silence between them had been more comfortable than this. 

“At Al’s.” James looks at Teddy’s half-empty mug, at the book, and doesn’t elaborate. 

“Is he still living with Rose and Scorpius?” 

James nods once. 

“What’s going on, James? We weren’t this—this whatever you’re being—we’ve never been like this.” 

“Maybe you can’t just walk back into my life like nothing’s changed.” 

“Maybe I don’t want to.” James leans across the table, and this close he can see James’s freckles, pale in comparison to Lily’s, can see the tint of red in his eyelashes, can see the way he’s been biting at his lip, the dents his teeth have left there. “We aren’t the same as we were at all, and what we had wasn’t necessarily a good thing,” although even now he’s not willing to discount it entirely, “but I don’t want you out of my life entirely. I don’t understand. Weren’t you trying to save us this awkwardness?” 

“I was,” James rubs a hand over his face, “fuck, I don’t know. I just didn’t want to ruin everything. And I don’t think I did.” He lets out a stupid, dry laugh. It’s unfamiliar in its heaviness. Teddy is not used to James seeming so unhappy. Even that first summer, when he was drinking himself into a wreck, he was never like this. 

“You didn’t,” Teddy tells him. “James, we used to be friends. I want that again. I don’t need—want,” he catches himself, catches the look James throws him, “anything else. I just want things to be normal, or sort of normal, for us.” 

James bites at a cuticle. “Can we do that, do you think?” 

“We can try.” Teddy tries to relax, stretches his legs out beside the table. He doesn’t ask James what’s bothering him. He goes for the easiest question first, “Anything interesting at work?”

James looks at him for a few minutes, and then nods, curt, decision made. 

“There’s a new curse we’re working out.” 

Teddy keeps his tone as easy as possible. “Can you give me any details?” 

“Yeah, it’s,” and James tells him, haltingly, about the idea he’s come up with for this curse, that will trap any unauthorized person traveling down in the vaults in a cage suspended in the air, with an immediate line of communication to the security department—a recent addition, of which James had been the creator. 

“Just in case,” James finishes out, “they know something we’ll want to find out within ten years. It’s an alternative to trapping trespassers in the vaults, you know?” 

James is more relaxed now, talking with his whole body, and the way he’s cocking his head and asking Teddy, “you know?,” even though ten minutes ago he wasn’t even _talking_ to Teddy—it’s a crazy thing, the way it makes Teddy’s heart beat faster, the way he feels, despite that, instantly calmer than he’s felt in months. Like without James like this, easy and open as Teddy knew him, Teddy’s life hasn’t been right. 

- 

They run into each other in the coffee shop again the next week, and James says hello first. He’s holding a cup in one hand and is half out the door when Teddy comes in, but he turns to stand in line beside him. 

“Do you want to get dinner sometime this week?” Teddy offers, and James shrugs, then nods. 

“Yeah. Okay if Albus comes?” 

“Sure,” and Teddy doesn’t read anything into James’s obvious attempt to invite a buffer. What is there to read into? It’s all there on the surface. 

- 

 _Dear Lily,_

The letter sits addressed and incomplete—not even begun really—on Teddy’s desk in the office he shares with Tully and Rose, who are both working on the history of defense research with him. He keeps the paper under his jar full of pens and broken quills, and sometimes thinks about completing it, but he’s not sure what to say. Lily will be finishing school in less than a month; he has nothing to say to her. 

But he still wants to say something. There are moments, at dinner with James and Al, passing James in the coffee shop—which he’s not even ashamed to frequent anymore—grabbing lunch with James in one of the cafés in Diagon Alley, when there’s a feeling that Lily is a taboo topic, and he can’t think of why. He can’t think of a reason for it, except that James will go silent when Lily’s brought up, or Al will fake a coughing fit when he’s about to mention her, and Teddy doesn’t understand it. 

So he’s got the start of a letter to her sitting on his desk, but he doesn’t know what he wants to tell her. 

One night he’s in the office long after the other two have gone home, ready to beat his head against the stupid book written half in Middle English he’s attempting to work his way through, and when he cannot handle it any longer he pulls the letter out, looks at the _Dear Lily_ at the top, and starts writing. 

 _I’ve been seeing more of James and Al recently, and it really makes me miss the summers I used to spend with your family. I have felt so nostalgic for those summers recently (maybe it’s the drudgery of working every day at the same job—avoid it as long as possible, I’d advise) but some days I just want to be hanging out in your parents’ backyard, throwing around one of your mum’s old quaffles with you and James, so badly. I can’t put a word on the feeling, exactly. I know if a simpler version of time travel were possible, I'd choose to go back to one of those afternoons. Which is admittedly strange. I’m happy now, as I know you’ll call me out on—say,_ This is when we were happiest, Teddy, _but it’s not true, is it? Not for me. I’m happy enough now. It was just a calmer sort of happiness back then. It was easier to believe that we would be able to stay that happy forever._

 _And look at me, getting so fucking maudlin. You’re probably laughing to yourself, or to Hugo, or to any of the other people flocking around you, calling me a wanker. But, honest, Lil, I just wanted to write to you and tell you I miss you and I miss hanging out with you and James and I want to be able to do that again. I just want to say that seeing James recently, it’s made me miss you. And I know you’re not the same—I know we’re not the same, none of us, as we were all those summers ago, but we could still be friends, couldn’t we? Better friends, maybe, since I’m not ages and ages older than you anymore. (Please don’t deny this—I already feel ancient these days.)_

_Just, whatever you end up doing after school, wherever you end up going, keep this in mind—keep me in mind._

He sends it and regrets it immediately, but he’s used one of the office's owls and can’t call him back once he’s out of sight. 

- 

Al shows up to dinner the next week, but James doesn’t. 

“He’s busy,” is all Al says at first, setting down a six pack of muggle beer on the counter and going to Teddy’s cabinets to get plates. “Lily’s around,” Al adds, once he’s opened two bottles and left one by the stove, where Teddy’s adding soy sauce to a stir fry. 

Teddy tries not to react, but he thinks his hair may have gone a shade or two lighter. Not enough for Al to notice, hopefully, in the yellow light of his kitchen. “Lily could have come.” He hasn’t had a response from her yet, and it’s been days. He feels a desperate sort of shame over the letter, the way it was written, the way it probably looked to her. It must have seemed so pathetic, and it is occurring to him that it may have _been_ pathetic, too. 

Al is staring at him. “Yeah, but she’s not _supposed_ to be out of school,” he says after a minute, “so she’s not risking going outside.” 

“How’d she get out, then?” 

“Shrieking shack, and then she Apparated to James’s. He just sent me a message saying he wouldn’t be coming.” 

Teddy accepts that because Al clearly wants him to accept it, although Lily could easily have Apparated to _his_ flat. He tilts back the first gulp of beer and anticipates a long evening. He and Al still don’t have that much to say to each other. 

“Look,” Al takes a plate of stir fry from Teddy with a hurried thanks and sits in his usual spot at the small kitchen table, “I know that you’re trying to fix things, and I don’t know what went on between you and James,” Teddy opens his mouth, stopping behind his chair, but Al talks right over him, “but I know _something_ went on. I just want you to know that if you’re trying to get that back to where it was? It’s not going to happen. So if that is your goal, then you should give up.” 

Teddy wants to figure out exactly what Albus is saying, but his brain has short-circuited just a little and he has no _fucking_ clue where this is even going, or where it’s come from. All he can do is shake his head rapidly and say, “No, I don’t want anything. I just wanted things to be good again.” 

“Make sure that doesn’t change. You'll make things worse if you try for anything else," Albus warns him, and then sets into eating his stir fry. “This is good, Ted. Thanks.”

Teddy takes his seat slowly. It’s occurring to him that any step he takes could drop him deeper than he’s looking to go. 

- 

James comes to dinner the next week and doesn’t act differently. 

There’s a letter from Lily the next day, deposited on Teddy’s head by an owl who flies through his open bedroom window and is gone before he’s fully awake. 

 _Teddy,_

_James hadn’t told me he was seeing more of you, but I’ve harassed him into divulging some more information, and it sounds as if you’re doing well. What good accidental meetings in coffee shops can do. We have missed you at family events lately; I hope you’ll be coming to more of those._

_I totally get your nostalgia—maybe more than even you do, since my life is all about change these days. (No more Hogwarts? Adult job? “Real” world? (Someday I’ll treat you to my monologue on the ridiculousness of this concept that school is not the real world; James has heard it at least 10 times and maintains that it’s the most idiotic thing he’s heard and that it entirely misses the point, but I personally feel that he is the one who misses the point, and I will tell you about it next time I see you and you can agree with me.) Anyway, it’s all utterly terrifying.) I, like you, would love to be back playing around with mum’s old quidditch stuff. Too bad time-turners are so impractical._

_Your letter was nice and I only laughed at you once, maybe twice. I hope that when I do leave school I will (a) avoid entering into the monotony of a full time job with the adroitness that James did, initially, and (b) see you a little. I’m planning on moving to London, so hopefully I will, at least, be able to crash your regular dinners with my brothers._

_My dad has made it clear that I will not be living in London if I’m not able to support myself somehow, so I am currently pulling strings like mad to get in at the Ministry. (For now, I don’t want to end up there forever. I just want to check people’s wands when they walk in—what an easy job, right? But apparently you need to be trained in defensive magic. Like I’m not; I grew up with two brothers. That’s training enough for anyone.)_

_Anyway, I’m sure I will see you around. Thanks for the letter._

Teddy folds it and leaves it on his bedside table. He doesn’t know what it means—it’s a confusing mess of endearing tangents and shortly-worded dismissals. He thinks he’s pissed her off somehow, but can’t think of how; except that she was so rough at the coffee shop, until the end—is this just how Lily is now? Effusive and reserved in intervals? 

- 

She comes to dinner the first week of July. 

“I’m here under duress,” she announces, setting a container of cupcakes on the table and squeezing past Teddy to rinse her hands at the sink. Teddy glances over to see James rolling his eyes and Al following them both in, his expression difficult to read. 

“I told you you didn’t need to come,” James tells her. 

“Lily, you’re being rude,” Al says, before Lily can respond to James. “Teddy was nice enough to invite you.” 

“He didn’t, actually,” James points out. “Lily is just tagging along, uninvited.” He pokes her in the side as she joins him by the table, and Teddy is unsure as to whether he should let this conversation carry on or if it would be better to steer them back into the realm of politeness. 

“You’re all welcome anytime,” Teddy tries, and Lily shoves her elbow against James’s arm. 

“See?” she says, “I told you. Teddy doesn’t hate me. Although,” she reaches for one of the wine glasses Teddy had already set on the table, “I still think we should move this dinner somewhere else.” She takes a sip, leaves a smear of red lipstick on the rim of the glass. “That is what I was saying when I came in, not that I didn’t want to _have_ dinner with you. I was just saying that it wasn’t fair to have dinner at your place every week. We should go out.” 

“On whose paycheck?” Al offers Teddy an apologetic smile, but Teddy is too consumed watching the innate way Lily takes over the room to acknowledge it. 

“Not Teddy’s,” Lily jabs a finger at James, whose eyes shoot to Teddy and then back to his sister. “Seeing as how I’m sure he never complains about feeding you both every week.” 

“I don’t,” Teddy starts, but Lily holds up a hand. James glances at him again, a longer look, commiserating. 

“Shut up, Ted. We’re going out to eat next week. I’ll pick the place. We’ll split it, but Teddy’s not paying for himself for at least a month.” 

Al throws his hands in the air. “Well I’m happy that’s settled. Let’s eat, you idiots.” 

- 

They eat in restaurants. Muggle places, mostly, where none of them are recognized, and Lily can throw herself over the table in an argument with Albus over where their father left his glasses the last time he visited Al’s flat without anyone taking a picture of the way her hair catches fire in the candle centerpiece and James reaches over and smacks it out like it’s nothing. 

“I hate my job,” Lily announces in August, when they’re sitting in a booth in the back of a dingy pub, drinking beer from pint glasses and waiting for their burgers to be delivered. 

“Doesn’t everyone?” Albus asks, bumping his shoulder against Teddy’s as he shifts on the vinyl of the booth. 

“What’s happened?” James turns a little to face Lily. 

“It just _sucks_.” Lily throws her hands out, and Teddy reaches across the table to catch her pint glass before it sends a wash of beer over the already-sticky table. 

“Well, what did you expect?” James’s voice, despite the words, is kind. 

“Not people being assholes to me all fucking day. Is it really that hard to hand over your wand and have it be weighed? Like, _really_? I’m not going to run off with your wand. I don’t need another wand! I have one! It works! I like it better than yours.” 

“Who’s this you?” Al asks. 

“Everyone,” Lily practically wails, leaning across the table and stabbing an unnecessarily accusatory finger at Teddy. He blinks at her. “It’s like a rule. I bet that if Teddy, perfect nice Teddy, came in and walked up to the wand-weighing station, he’d be a douche to us, too. It’s a requirement.” She takes a long gulp of her beer, wiping her mouth when she sets it down. “It’s a curse.” 

Albus laughs. “God, Lil, get a new job if you hate it that much.” 

“But remember,” James elbows her in the side, “people are people, and people suck.” 

“Although,” Teddy adds, because Lily is pouting, “the Ministry is the worst place to be, everyone knows it. I bet if you were working somewhere else people would be a little less suckish.” 

“You’re just saying that because you’re nice.” 

“He’s not that nice,” James puts in, and there’s an awkward pause before he continues, “he’s just being honest. But you have to get a job before you quit, because I’m not paying full rent on our flat—I didn’t have to move to a two bedroom, you know.” 

They share a quick look, a serious one that entirely belies Lily’s entire attitude of the night, and Al lets out a strange and choked cough. 

“Where would you look for work?” 

“I don’t know.” Lily jerks her gaze from James. “I probably won’t find anything. I’ll probably stay at the Ministry until I’m all old and misshapen.” 

“Lil,” James snaps, and Lily doesn’t even look ashamed. 

Teddy rolls his eyes. “You’ll find something,” he says. “You just need to figure out where you want to look.” 

Lily looks at him. “Yeah, but how do I do that?” 

“Keep your head up,” Al suggests, “your eyes open. In the meantime, we’re here.” 

“Keeping me company?” Lily asks, tone soft. 

“Exactly.” Teddy taps his foot against her shin beneath the table. 

“Thanks.” Lily looks at the table. “Really.” 

“We’re in London, Lil,” James says, like it’s a reminder. “And we’re together—all of us. And we’re adults. It’s what we’ve wanted, even if it’s not exactly right.” 

Lily turns to look at James, her head tilted so her hair falls to cover her profile. Teddy can’t make out what she says to James, but Albus calls, too loudly, across the table, “We’re still here,” and James shoots a grin at him and Teddy. 

“We know.” James’s tone is brazen. 

“Believe me, we know,” Lily turns back to them, her expression calmer, less pinched around her mouth and eyes than it had been, “you always are.” 

- 

James shows up outside Teddy’s flat one evening in August. He’s pacing the pavement below Teddy’s window, his hands running through his hair with every turn. Teddy considers leaving him out there until he’s brave enough to come up, but the possibility that he might leave forces Teddy out of his door and down the stairs, out onto the pavement just as James is turning around again at the end of the block. 

He blushes as soon as he sees Teddy, but he continues down the pavement toward him. Teddy leans against the wall of his building and waits. 

“I sort of wanted to talk.” 

“I thought you might. Want to come up?” Teddy jerks his chin up toward his window. James shrugs, then shakes his head. 

“It’s fine, we can stay out here.” 

“Okay.” Teddy rests his head back against the wall and looks at the just-lit streetlamp across the pavement. He doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m just…we’re good, right, Ted?” 

“We’re fine,” Teddy confirms. 

But James shakes his head, knocks his shoulder against Teddy’s. “I mean, we’re better than we were, right? We’re even better than we were when we together, aren’t we?” 

“We get along better.” Teddy makes a noise, a half cough, half laugh. “We go out in public now.” 

James throws a grin his way. “I think we talk more, too.” 

“It’d be hard to talk _less_.” 

James laughs, and Teddy’s glad, because he wants to make James laugh, and he wants this transition to be easy, to be over and to have been easy. But he also wishes, a little, deep down, that James behaved just a little as if Teddy had hurt him, as if Teddy had meant something, as if—and it’s difficult to admit, but—as if Teddy still means something. More than friendship. 

But that’s asking too much, and three months ago he would have thought it a lot to ask that James be laughing with him, so Teddy will accept what he has, when it comes to James. 

“It was just,” James says, once his laugh has fallen out, “we wanted different things.” 

“Did we though?” Teddy can’t help but ask. “Maybe we just didn’t know how to say what we wanted.” 

James stands still beside him, shoulders tense and mouth rolled thin, and then he nods. “Maybe,” he acknowledges, “but it made us end it.” 

“Yeah,” Teddy admits, “it did.” 

“But we’re good?”

“You think we are, right?” Teddy turns to face James fully, and James looks up at him. He nods, his lip between his teeth. “And I agreed. We’re good, James. It’s okay.” 

“Okay.” James runs a hand through his hair again. It’s a mess, and Teddy wants to touch it, to smooth it out, but he also doesn’t, because the space they’re in now is immensely fragile. 

“Okay? Are you sure you don’t want to come up?” 

James cocks his head. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I’m not interrupting anything?” 

“Nothing fun, believe me.” 

Teddy’s charmed a TV to work in his flat, and he and James watch a terrible film from the 90s. Teddy falls asleep before it’s ten minutes into the plot, but James stays awake, and tells him exactly what he missed before he goes home sometime around midnight. 

It’s not normal for them, not even close, but it’s normal for other people, and that seems like a good start. 

- 

He figures it out in the middle of September. He’s at their apartment, lying on his stomach on the sofa. He’s reading an article—some inflammatory shit that was intended to get funding cut to his department, which is so not going to happen—and Lily and James are arguing in the kitchen. 

He’s tuned them out. They spend a lot of time arguing, and Teddy’s learned that they’re rarely about anything serious but are always about things Lily and James need to sort out on their own. 

He would have continued to ignore this one, except Lily comes stomping into the living room, dragging James by one hand. The way she’s leading him—it looks natural. Seeing them there, James unwillingly following Lily, it strikes Teddy that he’s never seen her touch anyone else the way she touches James. 

He doesn’t let his brain follow that thought to its conclusion, because Lily is talking to him. “Do you think it’s worse to let your family think you’re eternally single or to bring a fake date to a family thing?” 

“Obviously he thinks it’s better to have them think we’re single, Lil,” and there’s no bitterness in the words. 

“It would be best not to lie, probably.” Teddy’s looking between them, and can’t resist, when he sees the look they exchange, adding, “but you are both single, aren’t you? So that’s easy.” James’s cheeks flush. Lily looks at him head-on, her expression not changing at all. He feels his brain spiral. “Just point them my way at the next family dinner. I’m way older than both of you. My perpetual singleness is more tragic than either of yours.” 

“I like that.” Lily grins. “Sacrificing Teddy to save ourselves.” 

“Rude.” James elbows her, but she just laughs. Teddy goes back to his article. 

He doesn’t let himself think until that evening, when he’s home in his flat. The thought of Lily and James together—it makes his mouth dry. It’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s. He stops himself. It makes perfect sense. The two of them, outside of everything, they make the most sense of everyone he’s ever seen. They fit. 

He remembers Albus sitting at his kitchen table in the spring, telling him not to try going for James again. Telling him that James didn’t come over because Lily was visiting. Albus, leaving hints, and Teddy, ignoring them. 

When the idea settles and he realizes the sense it makes, it feels like a bit of a relief. He can’t have either of them; he can love them both without ever having to worry about one of them loving him back. 

Eternal unrequited love going out in two directions. Teddy opens a bottle of beer and lies down on his bed. His life has turned pretty fucking poetic. 

He gives himself one night to be maudlin.  

- 

Lily gets ridiculously drunk and winds up in his living room. 

“I’m not going home,” she tells the sofa cushion. 

“Fine.” Teddy sits on the arm of the couch, looking down at the bottoms of her bare feet, dirty with dust and grime from her barefoot walk up his building's stairs. Her heels are on the floor by the door where she dropped them when she finally made it into his flat. She hadn’t even bothered ringing the buzzer, had just screamed her lungs out on the street until he came down to get her. 

“It’s amazing,” Teddy says without thinking, “that you aren’t in the papers more.” 

“My best friend Ris has spies in all of them.” Lily flops over and draws her knees to her chin. “She’s magnificent, Ris is. Got her hands in so much.” Lily yawns, not bothering to cover her mouth. Her tongue is blue from some drink, and Teddy thinks she was probably at a wizard club, which means whatever she’s on will take much longer to wear off. He may have her here until mid-afternoon tomorrow. He tries to feel anything but contentment about that, and fails. “Her mum’s boyfriend’s kept me out of so much shit, and now Ris is doing it too.” Lily blinks at him. “You’re judging me.” 

“I’m not,” Teddy protests. 

“You’re thinking I should be smarter.” 

“Hey, Lil.” Teddy tugs the pillow out from beneath his knee and chucks it at her. It lands on her chest; she doesn’t even try to catch it. “By this time after James finished school he’d already turned up at my place drunk at least ten times. This is your first. You’re doing fine. I can’t judge.” 

Lily’s face does this interesting twisting thing, and he wonders whether she knows about him and James. Probably, he thinks, but he’s not sure why it would inspire such a sour reaction in her—it's over, and they’re fine now. They are, and Lily barely knew Teddy then. 

She shakes it off quickly enough, though, so he doesn’t feel the need to press. “You make a solid,” she stuffs the pillow over her face for a second, then peers over the top, “a solid point, I mean.” 

“See, you could be worse.” 

Lily laughs, and then struggles to sit up but fails, falling back against the arm and making a pathetic sound, like a meowing cat. “You should tell James I won’t be home tonight.” 

“You could tell him?” 

“We’re not talking.” Lily burrows her face under the cushion and refuses to come out, no matter how much Teddy tugs at her foot or threatens her with _Aguamenti_ spells. 

He floos James, and James kneels in front of the tiny fireplace in his and Lily’s flat and rubs a hand over his face. If Teddy hadn’t already known about James and Lily, he definitely would have known then, with the way James is leaning toward the fire, face a mess of worry. 

“She’s fine,” he tells him, without saying anything else. “On my couch. Very very drunk. Says she’s not speaking to you.” James opens his mouth, possibly to explain, possibly to make excuses. “I don’t want to know, really.” 

“But it’s just something stupid about work,” James says, talking over him, “I just said something stupid about her job not being that hard, I didn’t even really mean it, obviously her job sucks, and she just went crazy.” 

“Well then there’s probably something else going on? I bet she’ll be ready to talk tomorrow.” 

James shakes his head, rocks back on his heels. “Thanks, Ted. Fuck, who’d have known you’d be running a home for wayward Potters.” 

“Just the two of you,” Teddy says, and tries not to let the words have as much weight as they should, “I’m not holding my breath for Al.” 

“Well,” James draws the word out, “Al has his shit together.” 

“Nominally. Look, I’ll try to get Lily home tomorrow. But she’s fine, really. Don’t worry.” 

James lets out a wry laugh. 

“Thanks, Ted. Really.” 

Teddy pulls his head from the small fireplace tucked into the wall of his bedroom and wanders back into the living room. Lily is asleep, snoring a little bit. 

The next morning she wakes up fine, a little hungover, Teddy can tell, although she pretends she isn’t. She leans against his kitchen counter and holds a coffee cup without drinking from it. 

“Are you going to go home today?” 

“Probably,” Lily says against the rim of her mug. “I’m still upset at James.” 

“He didn’t mean what he said, you know, about your job?” 

Lily glares at Teddy. “It’s not just that. It’s—he’s—it’s _weird_ , living together.” 

Teddy bites back his immediate response, which is something dumb and placating like, ‘all couples go through that,’ except that he’s not supposed to know, so he says, “It must be different, now, from how it was when you were little. After school and everything.” 

Lily reddens; it’s the first time Teddy’s ever seen her blush. “And everything,” she repeats. 

She sets her coffee on the counter and shrugs. “Thanks for letting me crash here. We’ll work it out, I’m sure.” 

“Of course you will.” 

And he doesn’t doubt it, because whatever else they are, Lily and James have always been good for each other. 

- 

“You still love him.” Lily sits in what Teddy’s come to think of as her chair in the coffee shop. It’s cold out, late November, and she has a wool scarf wrapped to her chin, her hair tucked beneath a knitted cap. He sits down across from her and hands her coffee before answering. 

“What I feel for James is complicated.” 

She nods, sips her coffee. “You don’t seem surprised that I know?” 

“Al knew.” Teddy shrugs out of his coat and relaxes back into his chair. “I’ve learned that you all don’t keep much from each other.” 

Lily’s gaze, so calm a minute ago, sharpens. “Oh?” her tone is pointed, too, and Teddy tries to look as if he’s not carrying an arsenal with him. He doesn’t think he’s successful; she sets her coffee down so she can twist her hands together. 

“You’re closer than most siblings. Everyone knows it,” she relaxes at his words, nods her head in acknowledgment, and then her shoulders tense as he continues, “and I know it better than most.” 

“Yeah?” The word is a challenge, her whole posture is a challenge. He wants to push this because he’s known for more than a month, he wants to push this because it is not normal, but he loves them both and he has learned that there is no normal when it comes to them. 

“Love’s a joke,” Teddy tells her. “Calm the fuck down. I’m not judging you.” He picks up her coffee and shoves it against her still twisting hands. She takes it, thankfully, because he cannot watch her fingers wind together for one more second. 

“How?” Lily asks, and he’s not sure if she’s asking how he’s not judging her or how he found out. 

“I’ve spent a lot of time with the two of you lately,” he tells her, which is an answer to both, if she chooses to take it as one. 

“Does it bother you?” 

“The way,” he starts to say, “I mean, not more than—I don’t know, Lily, I’m still here, aren’t I?” 

“And you love James.” 

“Like you do,” he confirms. “But I lost him, and you didn’t.” 

She picks at a fleck in the ceramic of her mug. “I sort of did—or you sort of didn’t.” The words are so soft he almost doesn’t hear them, and then when he realizes what she’s said, he’s not sure if he wants to follow that train of thought. Because it leads—well, everything is calm now. And maybe he’s wrecked with loving two people who’re in love with each other, but at least he’s the only one hurting the way it is. 

But he asks, “What do you mean?” because she is offering him something and he’ll take it, even if it ends up being the blade of a knife. 

“He still loves you, too, is what I mean. Not that he doesn’t love me, just—he hasn’t stopped loving you because of it.” 

“But he’s picked you, Lily.” Teddy doesn’t let her words register, because there’s a part of him that will take whatever he can get from whichever of them is willing, and that part is sick and large and he will not let it win, because its morality is completely lost. “And that counts for something.” 

She shrugs and looks into her coffee. “Yeah, but I’m just saying—if you offered? I don’t know what he’d do.” 

“I know what he’d do,” Teddy tells her, “because neither I nor James would ever do that to you. You have to understand that. We, God, Lily, we both love you too much to do that to you.” 

He doesn’t flinch when suddenly her face is right against his, her eyes a crazy flick of pupil as she tries to pin him still, tries to get right under the surface of him. “You love _me_?” she says. 

They’re still in the middle of a coffee shop when he says, “And James.” 

“You love me and James.” She falls back into her chair. “Oh.” 

"I wasn’t planning on ever saying anything, I just want you to be sure, I want you to be absolutely certain and confident and everything that I won’t ever hurt you the way you’re thinking I could hurt you, with James? Because that wouldn’t be something I’d want, it really wouldn’t, and,” but she’s shaking her head, holding up a hand. 

“It’s not the end of the world, Ted,” she tells him. “It’s maybe a good thing.” 

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” Because it’s unrequited in one way and unconscionable in another and it is in no way a good thing. 

“Well, I’m not sure.” She stands. “Come on, I want to see James, and you want to see James, and we are going to talk to each other.” 

He follows her, but only because he is always following her. 

- 

James is lying on the sofa in his and Lily’s front room. He’s on his stomach, reading a book propped against the violently green throw pillow Lily rescued from the waiting area of a restaurant months ago. He looks up when they come in. 

“What’s wrong?” He pushes himself up, lets the book fall shut and stands with his hands in his pockets, looking from Lily to Teddy where they’ve stopped just inside the front door. 

“Sit,” Lily waves her hands at James, “sit,” she tells Teddy. “I’ve had an idea.” 

James sinks back down, and Teddy slowly, slowly goes to join him. 

“It’s possibly a terrible one,” Lily warns, pacing in front of them. She’s still in her coat, fingertips white in fingerless gloves. “Possibly horrible. But,” she looks at James, and Teddy is entirely separate from what she’s saying when she asks, “but I was right, wasn’t I, about it being better?” 

James glances from Lily to Teddy. The sharp cut of his gaze is anxious; the way his lip curls is telling. But he does tell Lily, “Of course you were right.” 

“So,” Lily twists her hands together again, “so. James. Teddy knows about us.” 

James lowers his chin into his hands and stares across the cheap coffee table at Lily. He doesn’t turn to Teddy, but his whole posture stiffens, and it’s like he’s scared to look at him, like he’s keeping his gaze on his sister by a force of will. Teddy presses his hands between his knees and waits for Lily to dig a deeper hole. 

“And he doesn’t care, or anything. And you love him, and you know he loves you, you know, James, for all you won’t talk about it,” her tone is stern, admonishing, and then she continues, “and for all you won’t let me talk about it. But I think we should.” 

“What are you suggesting?” James’s voice is so soft, so quiet, that Teddy barely makes the question out. He’s not sure if Lily even hears it, or if she just understands what he’s asking. Or if she’s just running through her idea, carrying it through to the end. 

“And Teddy says he loves me, and you love me, and I don’t see why one of us should be miserable when—I don’t know. We’re not conventional, James. Even people who wouldn’t hate us for this wouldn’t call us conventional. Is there a point to keeping Teddy unhappy, to keeping you and I—whatever, incomplete—in order to preserve what we are by ourselves?” 

“Lily,” James says, and then stops. 

“Lily,” Teddy says, “are you saying that you love me too?” 

And then James laughs, the sound raw and loud and so out of place in the tight space Lily has created with her craziness, with her suggestion and the way she’s said it all like it’s linear and makes an unquestionable amount of sense. James finally says, through his laugh, “You dragged him here and didn’t even tell him _that_?” 

She puts her hands on her hips and scowls at James. “I was excited. Besides, you’re missing the point.” 

James throws Teddy a glance. It’s guarded but familiar—Teddy shrugs in response. “The point being,” he attempts, “that—you love us, we love you, we love each other,” the way he’s saying it, it’s like it’s easy but also ridiculous, like he is five seconds away from mocking this entire conversation, “and therefore we should, what, all be together?” 

“Why not?” Lily moves between the coffee table and the couch, her knees against James’s knees, and she leans over and presses her face to his and Teddy hasn’t seen them this close before, this near to kissing. It doesn’t—he doesn’t feel anything like jealousy, which is telling, and he knows they’re aware that he is right there, and still they don’t shift an inch away from each other, don’t look away from each other. 

Lily is asking James if he wants this, in the press of their foreheads and the centimeters of space between their mouths. But no one is asking Teddy. They’ll get to him, he’s certain, but he needs to know first—this isn’t something he’s considered. Not even recently, after he realized what they are to each other; the thought of the three of them together felt too much like trespassing. Too much of a taboo, when the fact of Lily and James and the way they are is already forbidden. But if they open the door to him, if they just let him in—does he even want that? Is it better to be alone than to be always at risk? 

“If people find out,” James starts, and Lily kisses his mouth shut. Teddy crosses his arms over his stomach. 

“You and I are already fucked if they found out.” 

“We can’t drag Teddy down with us. We can’t— _Lil_. It’ll be so much harder to hide.” 

“Will it?” Lily pulls back, straightens and looks down at the two of them. Teddy hasn’t decided yet, has no idea what he wants in the broad sense of this being his life, his entire life, that he is changing, that they’re changing. Right now, he won’t deny the idea is appealing, in an electric way. To go from being entirely alone to having both of them? It’s incredible that it’s even a possibility. But in the long term? It’s not just the press, the possibility of being found out. It’s the idea of handing James the ability to shatter him again, of giving Lily—mad, ridiculous, absolutely insane—that same power. Of giving it to them both at once. 

He doesn’t know if he trusts them that much. He loves them. But is that enough for this? 

“Will it really?” Lily says again, when neither he nor James says anything. “You have both already dated or whatever. Only Albus and I know, and neither of us knew when it was going on. And you and me, James? No one knows but Albus.” 

“Teddy figured it out.” 

“Teddy pays attention. Because he loves us.” Lily says the words like they’re the answer to everything, and it’s addictive to hear. “Other people aren’t looking at us that closely. Other people definitely won’t be looking for this.” 

“But there’s also,” Teddy cuts in, and both Lily and James turn to look at him, heads cocked and eyes not moving as they take him in. He knows they hadn’t forgotten that he was there, but that they also—this is the issue, he sees suddenly, of them opening the door to him. They’re thinking of not changing a thing, just widening what they have. And that’s not how it will end up working at all. “You said it yourself, Lily. James and I have dated. You and James live together. You and I—we’re friends, we’ve all grown to be friends, but it has taken work. This isn’t going to be easy. You’re—you are both acting like the only things we’ll have to worry about will come from outside.” 

“You don’t want us?” 

“He’s not saying that.” James reaches up and closes his hand around Lily’s wrist. “He is saying that if we do this, everything will be different. It won’t be us and Teddy, or Teddy and me and then you, it’ll be all three of us, and none of us have ever been—we’ve never even thought of having something like this.” 

“But if we all want it, then we could make it work.” 

“Then we could make it work,” James agrees. And they’re both looking at Teddy again. 

“We all want it?” Teddy asks them, and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t _know_ , but he thinks he does. 

“I want.” Lily nods. 

And James laughs, lets go of Lily’s wrist. “We all know you want,” he tells her, and then he turns to look at Teddy. “The problem with us was that I wanted commitment and I thought you didn’t.” This isn’t something new; they’ve been over this. This is a threat, a question of trust, because it’s not just Teddy who’s opening himself up to two different sources of potential harm. 

“I wanted commitment. I thought we couldn’t—I thought we were going to cause too many problems for your family.” And Teddy’s grinning because what they’re doing here is so much worse, so much vaster than what he and James had had. 

“This would be a flood,” James confirms. “Which is why—committed, but hidden.” 

Teddy nods. “Okay?” 

James kisses him like Teddy hasn’t been kissed since the last time he and James were together, and Lily’s saying something about tea, her coat and hat falling against Teddy’s back as she throws them at the couch on her way to the kitchen, and Teddy is so aware of James’s mouth, familiar but different in small ways, the way it moves against Teddy’s, and the sound of the faucet in the background. 

It’s domestic and a little awkward and Teddy had not believed, even minutes before, that his life would ever come here. 

He’s not sorry, though. 

  
I didn’t want to see it this way, / everything eating everything in the end. — James

It’s really fucking weird. Everything about it feels unnatural. 

James is there for Lily and Teddy’s first kiss, just minutes after he and Teddy have separated that first day. Lily brings over hot cups of tea and sets them on the coffee table—one two three—and then settles between James and Teddy on the couch. There’s no space, but she makes it enough. One of her knees is over James’s, her other is over Teddy’s, and her hands find their hands, and she turns her face to Teddy and kisses him. 

She’s holding James’s hand when she kisses Teddy. 

He feels a slight twist of jealousy in his gut. The sour taste of it rises in his throat. And then Teddy’s foot bumps his and Lily’s fingernails dig into his skin. The jealousy goes two ways. He can’t hold on to it. He doesn’t want to. So he lets it go. 

- 

It doesn’t turn normal right away. 

Teddy leaves to go back to his flat the first night, and Lily and James stand by the front door and look at each other. 

“Is it weird,” Lily asks, twisting some red hair around her fingers—messed up because of how Teddy had run his hands through it, “that I feel guilty over going to bed with you?” 

James shrugs. “I was just going to ask if you wanted me to sleep on the couch.” 

Lily bites her lip. It’s a familiar gesture, but it reminds James of the fact that the last lips to touch Lily’s were not his, and he steps forward and brushes his thumb over her lip, drawing it from between her teeth. The last lips to touch his weren’t Lily’s. The relationship goes all ways. 

“I don’t.” Lily shakes her head. “I didn’t want this to complicate anything.” 

“It’s going to, though. I’m not saying it’s not good.” Because they all love each other, because by this point they have shed rules, laws, morality like tyrants and anarchists. “It is good, Lil. I’m just saying—it’s not going to be easy. Should we have invited Teddy to stay?” 

“Wouldn’t that have been taking it too fast?” Lily rests her forehead against James’s shoulder. He places a hand on the small of her back. 

“I don’t know. We didn’t wait.” 

“No,” Lily agrees. “And you and Teddy didn’t?” 

“No.” James tastes alcohol in every memory of the first summer he and Teddy spent together. “But that was maybe not good.” 

“So what’s the answer, then?” 

James slips his hand beneath Lily’s shirt and runs his fingertips over the bumps of her spine. She shivers. “We do what feels comfortable.” 

“So we wait?” She pulls away from him, but takes his hand before there’s too much space between them. 

“So we wait,” he repeats. 

- 

They invite Teddy to dinner. James makes a curry dish that Lily claims makes her breathe fire, but it’s Teddy’s favorite. Or it used to be. 

Judging from the way Teddy’s face lights up when he comes into the flat, it still is. “I’ve missed this,” he tells James, looping an arm around Lily’s waist when she comes in from the bedroom. 

“It’s mad spicy,” Lily reminds him. 

“Lily set fire to the flowers we had on the table last time I made it.” James leans against the counter and waits. 

“Incendiary charm?” Teddy takes James’s challenge; he lets go of Lily and crosses the tiny kitchen, dropping a kiss against James’s mouth like it’s easy. 

“Got it in one,” Lily tells him. “I’m protesting spicy dishes one bouquet at a time.” 

Teddy glances over his shoulder at the table jammed between the back of the couch and the wall. “There’s nothing on the table today.” 

“Then it’ll be one of your lovely faces.” Lily points an index finger from James to Teddy. “And don’t think you’re safe just because you didn’t make it, Ted. I know James only made it because it’s your favorite.” 

James can feel his cheeks flushing. Teddy looks at his feet. Lily rolls her eyes. “It’s not embarrassing.” She jabs a finger at James’s stomach. “It’s _nice_.”

“Besides,” James turns back to the pot on the stove, “I did get something different for you." 

“Oh?” Lily rests her chin on his shoulder. “Did you?”

“Teddy, can you grab that box from the counter by the fridge?” 

Lily drifts away from James as Teddy pulls the white cardboard box from the counter, dislodging a canister of coffee and a bag of bread from their precarious positions beside the coffee maker. Lily reaches out for the box before Teddy even opens it. 

“Chocolate cake?” Teddy asks. 

“For dinner!” Lily spins around the kitchen, her shoulders knocking against Teddy and James as she weaves a complicated pattern across the floor. “You’re such a darling. You really are.” 

James laughs. “I find my life is easier when you’re happy.” 

“And chocolate does make me happy.” She turns to Teddy. “Do you want some?” 

“I’m dying for curry,” Teddy tells her. “Besides, I don’t actually believe that you’d give me any of that without a fight.” 

Lily shrugs. “It might be good enough to risk your life for.” 

Teddy sniffs. “Doubtful. This curry, though.” He reaches past James, a spoon in his hand, and steals some rice from the pot. James elbows him, but Teddy gets the spoon into his mouth quickly. “Fucking perfect,” Teddy breathes, although he’s got tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. 

“It’ll be even better when it’s done, asshole.” James is grinning, though. He can’t keep his face serious. 

- 

Albus meets them outside of Teddy’s office, Rose at his shoulder. “I haven’t seen you all in ages.” He crosses his arm and glares from James to Lily and back again. Rose leans back against the doorjamb, covering a yawn with one hand. James tries to beg her to step in with his eyes. She shuts hers. 

“We’ve been busy,” James tries. 

“Bull. I haven’t gone a week without seeing you all since that one summer Mum and Dad thought it’d be a good idea to send you both to France without me.” It had not been a good idea, James remembers. “And now it’s been three. Therefore, you’ve been avoiding me. What is going on?” 

“He’s been insufferable,” Rose adds. “Please tell him. Scorpius almost kicked him out yesterday.” 

“He did not,” Albus protests. 

“Momentarily, because you were moping. Because these two won’t talk to you. And James, stop looking at me like I’m going to help you wriggle your way out of this. I am not. I am fully on Al’s side in whatever sort of fight this is.” 

“It’s not a fight.” Lily steps around Albus and knocks on Teddy’s office door. “Ted?” 

He opens the door to her and joins them in the crowded hallway, looping a scarf around his neck before shutting the door behind him.

“What’s going on?” He looks at everyone, nose wrinkled in confusion. “Are you joining us for the movie?" 

“Didn’t know we were invited,” Albus spits. “Seeing as how you and my siblings haven’t been speaking to me for weeks.” 

“We haven’t not been speaking to you,” James tries, but Al shakes his head. 

“It’s the same bloody thing! I invited you to Thursday dinners, didn’t I? Did I receive a reply?” 

“No,” Lily admits. “But, like James says, we’ve been busy.” 

“With what?” Rose asks.

“Does it even matter?” Al puts in. “Like I was saying, you’ve been busy before. It’s never made a difference.” 

“Why don’t we talk about this after the movie.” Teddy begins moving toward the lift at the end of the hall. “You and Rose should come, it’s a historical film. Muggle, of course.” 

“I can’t,” Rose says. “Thanks for the invitation, just the same. Al, maybe you should come home with me. Talk with them later?” But Al is already walking alongside Teddy.

  
“No, the film sounds interesting. And we’ll talk after.” 

James and Lily exchange a look before following Al and Teddy and Rose into the lift. It is not optimistic. 

- 

They stand outside of the cinema after the film, which was a grotesque depiction of life as a prisoner of war during the Second World War. James has an empty feeling in his chest, and Lily is leaning against his side a little too obviously. Teddy is at his shoulder; their hands keep brushing. It’s unintentional, but Albus’s gaze keeps dropping to where they touch. 

“Really?” Albus asks, after the silence has become nearly unbearable. “Fucking _really_?” 

Lily steps toward him. “Al, what?” 

“You three,” Albus says. “I mean, _fuck_.” 

“Al, what are you thinking?” Teddy’s voice is steady. He doesn’t sound worried. He doesn’t move an inch closer to James, even though James wants to cower into him, wants to draw Lily to his chest. Because Albus has been miraculous. But miracles don’t keep forever. 

Teddy doesn’t know Al, though. He can think that they can convince him he’s wrong, that what he’s seeing isn’t what’s happening. 

Teddy can try. James and Lily will let him. But James doesn’t think he’ll succeed, and Lily is shifting from foot to foot, like she wants to run. She knows Teddy will fail. When Albus knows something, he _knows_ it. The world isn’t black and white for him, but the lines he does see are strict. 

“I’m thinking that you are all absolute idiots. Fucking assholes.” Albus rocks back on his heels. He sticks his hands in his pockets. 

“Al,” Teddy starts. 

“Don’t. Don’t even _try_. Do you all think you’re invincible? Do you think our family is? I mean,” and he covers his mouth with his hand. He squeezes his eyes shut. “We can’t talk about this here. I can’t talk about this now.” He shakes his head. “You two,” he looks at Lily and James. He hasn’t looked at Teddy once, this whole time. “You just love pushing boundaries. You find a wall and you have to break it down. You’re going to cause damage, if you haven’t already.” 

“Al,” James steps toward him. “Al, you knew already.” 

“We can’t— _here_. I’ll come by tomorrow, okay? I’ll come by tomorrow and you assholes can try to explain why you’re willing to risk so much.” He turns, his shoulders stiff. Before he reaches the doors, he turns and says to Teddy, “I guess I shouldn’t have been warning you. But maybe you could have warned _me_.” 

Teddy brushes past James, past Lily. “Albus.” 

“Tomorrow,” Al promises, and leaves. 

- 

They go back to Lily and James’s flat. Teddy comes up without asking, without either of them inviting him. James doesn’t want him to go, though, and Lily never would. 

Lily finds a bottle of white wine in the fridge. She pours them each a glass. 

“Well,” she finally breaks the silence that fell in Al’s wake. “Tomorrow will be fun.” 

James nearly chokes on his wine. Teddy makes a neat swallow of his mouthful and raises his eyebrows at her. “Possibly the wrong word.” 

“Possibly sarcasm.” Her voice is tenser than normal. James can feel one of Lily’s tantrums brewing. Teddy just leans back against the counter, rests the rim of his wine glass against his chin, and watches her as she paces. 

“He shouldn’t even care,” Lily begins, “he’s not involved.” 

James stands stiff beside Teddy. He watches Lily too; despite having been through her tantrums before—so many in their childhood, fewer recently—he’s never been sure of how to react to them. He mostly waits. They burn out eventually. 

Teddy, though, speaks. “Well, you’re involved. James is involved. You two are his closest friends. You wouldn’t deny that.” 

Lily turns on her heel. James feels he should warn Teddy, but before he can think of a subtle way to do it, Lily’s saying, “Of course I wouldn’t. Still, though, it’s our choice. All of ours. Why would he care?” 

“Lily, don’t be stupid. Of course he cares.” James knows the words are wrong the minute he says them, but he can’t take them back. He straightens his shoulders as his sister faces him. 

“He didn’t care about _us_.” She sounds defeated, soft. 

“He did.” James knows something shifted last Christmas, when Al figured it out. He had thought Lily had noticed it too, but maybe she hadn’t. 

“Why’d he act like he didn’t, then.” 

“We’re all we’ve got. Al would never make us choose, Lil.” 

“And then you invited me in.” Teddy pushes away from the counter, sets his empty wine glass beside the sink. “The secret is both out and bigger. And he’s shut out more now, I guess.” 

“It’s not like we’re going to abandon him. It’s not like anything’s changed for him.” 

James places his glass beside Teddy’s. He hasn’t drunk it all. “He’s our third, Lil. And we’re his first and second, depending on the day.” 

Lily doesn’t deny this. She couldn’t. 

“He’s got Rose,” she does say, “Scorpius. He’s got other people.” 

“So do we. I’m just saying—he’s locked out a little bit, Lil. I’m not saying he’s right.” They all know he’s right, though. Moral ambiguity aside, every decision they’ve made has been firmly on the side of wrong. But that doesn’t mean a thing to them. Love trumps all. They learned that early. 

“What he’s saying,” Teddy steps in, “is tomorrow we should be more accepting of his point of view. When we talk to him—just the fact that he’s willing to talk, that’s a good thing. We should be as understanding as possible tomorrow, so you all don’t hurt each other.” 

James shakes his head. “It’s not an issue of hurting each other. We do that all the time. It’s whether or not we can survive this one hurt.” 

“I think we can.” Lily downs her wine. “We must be able to, right? We’ve made it through everything else. And this—us?—we’re not a bad thing. Al will see that eventually.” 

“Or he’ll accept that we don’t see us as a bad thing,” James suggests. 

“Which will amount to the same thing in the end.” Teddy reaches out and takes Lily’s glass from her hand. He sets it on the counter.

The three of them stand in the tiny space of the kitchen and look at each other, hands empty, not touching. 

“Do you want to stay?” James offers. 

“If you’ll have me.” 

“Yeah.” Lily takes his hand. He takes James’s. “We’ll have you.” 

The bed isn’t that big. Their limbs are overlapping; they’re three parentheses pressed together and over each other. They don’t do anything more than sleep—Lily, then James, then Teddy, Teddy’s arm over James’s side, Teddy’s hand on Lily’s hip, James’s foot between Teddy’s ankles. There is no expectation. This, this method of being together, it feels as natural as possible. To James, it feels right. 

- 

Albus comes around eight. He knocks at the door to the flat. Teddy answers it. There’s no sugarcoating this, James tells him as he nudges him toward the door. “Let him see it as it is,” he says, and presses his hand to Teddy’s shoulder. 

Teddy’s still in a pair of pajama bottoms borrowed from James. Lily is wearing an old t-shirt of James’s and Teddy’s scarf from the day before. James has a cup of coffee that started off the morning as Teddy’s. They’re not hiding a thing for Al. 

Al comes in, gaze skirting over the three of them. He sits down at the kitchen table, takes off his coat and undoes his scarf and folds them over the back of the chair. He lays his hands flat on the table in front of him. 

“Sit down.” The three of them do, silently taking their usual seats. Lily sits beside Al, then Teddy beside her. James is across from Albus, the whole long narrow table between them. The way Al won’t look at him, it feels like oceans. 

“You’ve already made me a liar,” Al tells his hands. “The two of you. I said I wasn’t going to ask. I asked you not to fuck it up, not to make it more difficult, and I said I didn’t want to talk about it.” He closes his eyes. “It doesn’t—you might think it disgusts me, but it doesn’t. I promise you that. I understand, I do. Love is—whatever; I mean, Dad is always telling us, has always been telling us, how important it is. It’s the _one thing_ , the one thing. When nothing else mattered, love did. So when I worked out what was going on between the two of you—I didn’t want to know about it, I don’t. But I didn’t judge you. I couldn’t, you know. Not the way we were brought up, not the way our lives have gone. But other people would have.” 

“We were discreet.” Lily is looking at Al. James admires her; every time he looks at their brother he feels a little more anxious. He’s relegated his gaze to his coffee, to Teddy’s hands on the table, to Lily’s amazingly calm face. 

“You were discreet,” Albus admits. “More discreet than I’d have imagined possible for the two of you.” 

“Thanks,” Lily scoffs, and she’s treating this just like any day, like any conversation. 

“But I did tell you not to fuck it up.” Albus doesn’t sound ordinary. Not at all. 

“And have we?” 

“The three of you? I think that’s a bit of a fuck up.” 

“How is this any different from what you were just saying?” Lily gestures at James and Teddy. James drops his gaze. Teddy lowers his head. “All that about love or whatever.” 

“I’m not saying I’m judging—okay, you know what. Fuck this.” Al stands up and starts pacing, crossing the room and back again. His boots are loud on the wood floor. “I am judging. I know I shouldn’t. I know if you’re in love then that’s what—what it is. I shouldn’t judge. But didn’t you have enough? What could possibly make you want to draw poor Teddy into this? Into our family, into you, into what will happen to you when the press finds out? Nothing will ever be normal for you. And that made me sad, when it was just the two of you, but nothing would ever have been normal for us. We’re Potters. We’re used to it. But Teddy? He could have had the most normal life in the world, associations with our family aside. He could have found a someone, a someone he could bring over to family shit and who the press could photograph him with and who he could get married to. If the two of you didn’t want that, fine. It probably would have been ruined for you anyway. But he’s enough out of it. He could have had it.” 

James swallows. It’s guilt he tastes. Because he and Teddy could have had it, that normalcy Al is talking about, at one point. Except there was always Lily, and there always would have been Lily. 

“I wouldn’t want it.” Teddy stands up and gets in Albus’s way. Al stops and looks up at him. The space between them is minuscule. “I didn’t want it; I won’t want it; I don’t want it.” 

“How?” Al waves at Lily and James. “I know maybe you love them, but how could—you’ll be hiding forever. You’ll be liars forever, all of you. You’ll be fielding questions, speculation. You’ll be disappointing everyone who loves you, who wants you to be happy.” 

“But we’ll be happy.” Teddy rests his hands on Albus’s shoulders. “Look, Al. We’ll be happy. Maybe no one else will realize that. I pray that if they do, no one beside you will realize _why_ we are. But we will be.” 

“Will that matter to everyone else?” 

“Why should it? Why should we let what they want decide what we want?” Lily stands to join Teddy. James pushes back from the table but doesn’t stand up. The space is too crowded; there are too many questions. 

He listens, though, as Al sighs. Teddy has dropped his hands. Al steps back from Lily and Teddy—James can hear his boots on the floor. “The thing,” Al says, “the thing is, how long are you willing to lie to them? How long are you willing to go home and have Mum and Dad ask you whether you’re seeing anyone? How long are you willing to see the gossip pages full of your pictures and question marks?” 

“As long as we have to. Eventually they’ll get bored of us.” Lily says it like their lives haven’t already been corralled by those questions, by those same gossip magazines. 

“And if they don’t,” Teddy says, “what do they matter? We tell your parents we’re happy, we keep repeating it. We ignore the magazines.” 

“The real thing is why you care.” James finally stands. There’s a place for him beside Teddy, and he takes it. 

“Why wouldn’t I care?” Al snaps. 

“No, I know. Of course you care. You love us, Al. You’re our brother,  you’re Teddy’s friend. We love you just the same as we always have. More importantly,” James looks into Al’s familiar eyes. Their father’s eyes, Al’s eyes. Shot with red, with dark swoops beneath them, “most importantly, you know us. And so you know when we’re lying. We would have tried to lie to you, you know. We wouldn’t have stopped talking to you these last few weeks if we believed we could lie to you.” 

“So if we don’t have to lie to you,” Lily puts in, “and we don’t, because you know us, then nothing between us needs to change at all, Al. You’re still our brother; you’re still Teddy’s friend. Why’re you afraid of losing us?" 

Al rubs a hand over his mouth. “Because you might ruin everything. You say you’ll be careful, that you’ll be happy, and maybe I believe you. Maybe I’ll believe you eventually. But you’re fucking idiots if you think it’ll be easy.” 

“We don’t think it’ll be easy. We just think it’ll be worth it.” 

“Worth losing everyone?” 

“Would we lose you?” James can’t keep his voice steady. Al’s a staple; a solid thing. 

Al shuts his eyes and shakes his head fast. “You’ll take me down with you, you know you will. I’d never let go.” 

“And that’s it, right?” Lily reaches out and grabs Al’s hand. It’s a desperate movement. “You’re afraid we’ll ruin everything for all of us.” 

“Of course I am.” 

“We won’t. We’ll protect you to the grave, Al. We said that early on.” 

“And I said it about you.” Al looks at Teddy. “All of us, you know. All of us go down together; all of us protecting each other to the end. Cradle, grave, all of that. I can’t abandon you now.” 

“Even though you want to.” James suggests it; it feels honest. 

“A part of me does. Only a part.” 

“Then we wait it out. You’ll see, it’ll be fine.” Lily lets go of him. “Have breakfast with us. Nothing’s different, Al, you know? Nothing needs to change.” 

Al looks at the three of them, standing there. He doesn’t say a thing at first. He looks like he’s alone on an island, or like he feels as if he is. 

“Is Teddy cooking?” 

“I can cook,” Teddy answers. 

“Fine, then, I’ll stay.” 

He sits back down at the table. Lily gets him coffee in a clean mug. James sits down across from him. He tries to read his expression, but it’s difficult. Al tries to smile at him, close-mouthed and tight. 

“You’re my big brother, James. These things don’t change so easily.” 

James tries to return his smile. “I know.” 

But they do change; James knows that, too. 

- 

“What’re we doing?” Lily’s sitting on the couch. It’s a Saturday afternoon, a couple of weeks after their first conversation with Albus. There have been more conversations, but there have also been more meals, more films, more ordinary days. Everything’s fine. Which is why Lily is asking questions. 

Teddy looks up from the book he’s reading. He’s lying on his stomach in front of their fireplace. There’s no fire in it, and a few of Teddy’s pens have rolled beneath the grate. James will need to remember to take them out. 

“What do you mean?” Teddy asks. “We're being lazy.” 

“I don’t know.” Lily stretches, arms over her head, shirt pulling up from the tops of her jeans. James sees a familiar pattern of freckles. “I thought maybe we should go out. Or do something.” 

“What sort of something?” James suspects where she’s going with this. It’s a bold thought, but one that shouldn’t be bold. They shouldn’t be—well, it might be time. 

“Teddy,” Lily stands, “James, my two very favorite men,” she holds her hands out, “would you like to go to bed?” 

Teddy’s face goes red. His hair goes red. It’s an instant thing; Lily’s question and he’s flaming. James laughs at the sight, it burns all of his nerves right out. 

“Come on, Ted.” He joins Lily, wraps an arm around her waist. “We can’t just all sleep in the same bed from now until forever. That’s not all we’re in this for. We shouldn’t be so shy around each other.” 

“But it’s,” Teddy pushes to his feet, rubs his hands on the front of his sweater, “it’s not like—it’s awkward.” 

Lily tilts her head so it bumps against James’s shoulder. “We could get drunk first,” she offers. “I just think it’s probably time. We don’t need to be sober.” James tightens his grip on his waist. He wants to be sober. 

“Do you want to be sober?” Teddy asks Lily. He’s not looking at James. He knows this is not about him. He’s involved because he has to be; they’ve all been together except for Teddy and Lily. 

“Yeah. But I’ll get drunk for you.” She blinks her eyes at him, and he’s suddenly laughing. 

“This is ridiculous,” he finally gets out. “Come on, you assholes, let’s go to bed, then. Let’s see how confident you really are.” 

And it is really fucking awkward. Like in the beginning, how strange it was. There are too many hands, too many feet. Too many people. And then James reminds himself that this, right now, is not about him. 

It’s not about him, so he kisses Lily and Teddy each once, and then he pushes back to the headboard. Lily’s hand finds his at some point—everything about the afternoon is a burning haze of lust, for all of them—but Lily grips his hand while she and Teddy move together, and Teddy looks up and meets his gaze, and it’s not—it’s still weird, still strange. There’s nothing normal about it. But it doesn’t feel wrong at all, to be there, the three of them in the bed. 

They don't get up for a long time. There are more ways of doing this, of loving each other, than James had thought possible. They’re all just learning, but he falls asleep with Lily’s bare shoulder beneath his chin and Teddy’s hand on his bare thigh. There’s nothing so miraculous as what they’ve found in each other, he’s absolutely certain of it. 

-

His mum invites him out to a pub in his parents' village the next week. It’s not an invitation so much as a command, and James Apparates to a stall in the toilet with a twist of anxiety in his gut. 

His mum is already seated at a table in a dim yellow-lit corner. His dad is not there, which is not a good thing. There are a couple of pints on the table, and James takes a grateful drink from his before he's fully in his chair.  

His mum doesn't wait a second. As soon as he puts down the glass, she says, “James,” so calmly. He is not going to like what’s coming. 

“Mum?” 

“I know that you are very busy with work, and you know that your father and I are very proud of you, but I just want to make sure that you're happy.” 

James almost laughs. Maybe Al knew this was coming. Maybe their mum cornered him first. Because otherwise—well, otherwise the timing is much too suspicious. 

“I’m happy, I am. I like my job. I love my friends. I have a life, you know, I don’t just work.” 

“But,” she looks down at her dark beer, and then back up at him, eyes narrowed, “are you seeing anyone, James? Because I’d like to think you could bring someone home some day. We’re not so scary, your father and I.” 

James rolls his eyes. He knows how to lie to his mum. Better than his dad, even, but the lies are not comfortable. “I see people sometimes,” he says, “but I don’t really want to bring anyone home until I’m sure. Not about marriage or anything, just long term, you know?” 

His mum nods. She doesn’t look convinced. 

“Our family is a lot to take on,” James reminds her. “Even if we didn’t have an intimidating reputation. And,” he thinks, “I mean, you know I’m not lonely, right? I’ve got Lily and Teddy and Albus, Rose and the rest. I’ve got friends at work. I’m not unhappy.” His mum is watching him, eyes narrowed. “I’m really not. You don’t need to be unhappy for me, or worried for me. Even if I never get married, well. It’s not for some people, you know. Look at Uncle Charlie. Would you ever question his happiness?”

She blinks, then shakes her head. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t. I guess it’s different, because you’re my son, and I want you to—I want you to be able to have that support system, you understand?” 

“I do understand. But I have a support system. Like I said, Lily, Teddy, Al—we're all there for each other. I’m not worried or sorry about how my life is going. You don’t need to be, either.” 

“Okay, okay.” She leans back in her chair. “How is Teddy, anyway? He hasn’t been by in ages; your dad says he’s busy.” 

James tells her as much as he knows about Teddy’s job—which is a lot—and when they finish their pints and she hugs him goodbye and promises him she’s done worrying—which he doesn’t believe for a second—he goes to Al's townhouse. 

James rings the doorbell. “Coming,” Al shouts from inside, moments before he opens the door. 

“Hey, asshole.” James shoulders his way inside, and Al lets him lead the way to the kitchen, where James pours himself a glass of whisky from the bottle in the cupboard above the sink. “Is anyone else around?” he asks before taking a drink. 

“No, just me and you. What’s bothering you?” Al caps the bottle and resettles it in the cabinet, brushing a bit of dust from the bottle beside it before closing the door. 

“I just met up with Mum.” 

“Oh.” Al pulls out a chair and sits, looking up at where James is leaning against the fridge. “Well, you had to know that it wasn’t going to be any fun when she invited you alone.” 

“Obviously.” James takes another sip, then allows himself to tip back the remnants. He feels warm, finally, the burn running all the way down his throat. “But you could have warned me.” 

“I basically did!” Albus holds up his hand. “No, you can’t blame me. I told you she’d be asking questions. It won’t stop, you know.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me _specifically_ that she is on the rampage now? You knew. She caught you first.” 

Albus rolls his eyes. “Because I didn’t want to be the only one to have to go through that conversation. It was terrible. I shouldn’t have to suffer alone just because she’s the least scared of what I would do to her for asking those questions.” 

James scowls. “That’s very selfish of you.” 

“I figured I was due for some selfishness. Besides, you survived it. Good practice and everything.” 

“Not fun, though.” He rinses his glass out in the sink and then turns back to Albus. “What _did_ you do to her? She certainly waited a while between asking you and asking me.” 

“Yeah, she probably did need time to recover. I just told her it was none of her business whom I was seeing and if I loved someone enough to bring them home then I’d probably be marrying them so if, by chance, I happened to bring someone to Christmas she’d better make sure she and dad like whoever it is. Very loudly. And with a few curse words. And then I stormed out.” 

James breathes out. “That was brave of you.” 

Albus shrugs. “Or cowardly, I still can’t decide. Anyway, she bought me a conciliatory bottle of whisky and dinner at the Three Broomsticks with her and dad and Aunt Hermione, so it worked out okay. Did you blow up at her?” 

“Nah. She did it in public, so it wouldn't have been worth it.” James shakes his head. “Besides, I didn’t want to make her suspicious. And I’m not so easily bribed, so it would have had to have lasted longer, and we don’t want any more messes.” 

“No, I don’t imagine you would.” Al shrugs, pushes to his feet. “Come on, then, want to go out? Teddy and Lily tell me there’s a new pub in your end of town. You owe me a drink.” 

James shoves against his brother’s shoulder. “You’re the ass who didn’t warn me about getting the inquisition from Mum.” 

“You’re the ass who fell in love with our sister. And god-brother.” 

“Touché.” James fingers the coins in his pocket. He probably has enough for a couple of pints.   

- 

He’s sitting outside of the café near their flat when Teddy finds him. It’s a weirdly warm day for so early in the spring and he's not uncomfortable sitting at one of the tables on the pavement beneath the awning. He’s got a cup of once-hot coffee in front of him. He’s trying to read, but he can’t focus. 

Teddy drops into the chair across from his and rests his chin on his hands. His foot bumps against James’s beneath the table. 

“Hey.” James shuts his book without marking the page. It’s boring enough that he’d love an excuse to never pick it up again. “Did you just come from the flat?” 

“The flat with a very angry Lily inside? Yes.” 

“Did she let you in?” 

“Of course not. Did she kick you out?” 

“Did she ever. Loudly and with curses.” He rubs at his nose, which had been sporting an ugly boil before he made it to the toilet in the café. “It’s fine, though. She’ll be fine again soon.” 

“What even happened?” Teddy reaches over and takes James’s coffee. He wrinkles his nose as soon as he drinks it. “You realize that you don’t even need to go buy a new cup to get this heated up?” He points his wand at the cup from beneath the table, through the holes in the metal surface, and mutters a spell. Steam curls up into the air. He takes another sip. “Better.” 

“Maybe I like my coffee cooled down.” 

“But I know you don’t. Anyway, that’s not what we’re talking about. What’s going on with Lily?” 

James rests his elbows on the table and cups the warm coffee in his hands. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think she’s still fed up with work but doesn’t want to quit without having something else. Or she could be in one of her what’s-the-point phases. Those happen sometimes.” 

“Everything’s useless, might as well die?” Teddy raises his eyebrows. 

“Alone and unloved.” 

“Only reason she’s alone is because she’s choosing to be.” 

“Yes, well, I tried to tell her that when she was chasing me from the flat, but it did not go over well.” 

Teddy grins. “Did you say anything to get her going?” 

James taps his chin, biting back an answering smirk. “I think I said, ‘Hey, d’you want Thai or tapas tonight?’ and then she had her wand out and was shouting at me.” 

“Oh, the banality of existence. Yes, of course that would upset her.” Teddy stands. “Come on, James, let’s go rescue our girlfriend from herself.” 

The word is a weird one when applied to their relationship with Lily. But it’s not a _bad_ weird, exactly. 

“You’re normalizing it.” James realizes when they’re halfway to the flat. 

“Is that not good?” Teddy grabs James’s hand and pulls him off the street into a dim and narrow shop lined with bottles of alcohol. “Vodka? Whisky? Champagne?” 

“It’s good,” James answers, then looks at the rows of bottles, “Prosecco.” 

“Prosecco,” Teddy repeats. He grabs a bottle in each hand and nods at James to grab some too.  They pay and exit onto the pavement, cradling the bottles at their elbows. 

They’re silent as they head up the stairs to James and Lily’s flat. The door is shut and locked. James and Teddy don’t try their keys. Neither of them tries an _Alohomora_ charm. Instead, Teddy knocks on the door, fist loud against the wood. 

James calls, “Lil? We’ve brought drinks.” If their neighbors weren’t judging them before this, there’s nothing he can say that will make them judge them now. 

“Come on, Lil. Let us in.” Teddy presses his forehead against the door. 

It opens, and Teddy stumbles forward. James and Lily let out simultaneous laughs as he catches himself, straightening with the bottles still clutched to his chest. “Really,” he mutters, brushing past Lily into the flat. “So immature.” 

James rolls his eyes and nudges Lily with an elbow as he comes inside. “We got prosecco.” 

“I can see that.” Her voice is stiff. “Did you get food?” 

“We thought this would be good enough.” Teddy holds up a bottle before setting them both on the counter in the kitchen. “Not that alcohol is recommended treatment for all ailments, but we thought for yours it might do.” 

Lily spins around on one stockinged foot. She plucks her wand from the dish-rack beside the sink, scrubs a drop of water from the tip, and points it at the bottles. Three of the corks spin out and hit the ceiling, leaving damp marks as bubbles fizz over the rims onto the counter. 

She takes a bottle in silence and goes through the living room to the bedroom. James and Teddy look at each other. 

“Well,” Teddy reaches for another of the uncorked bottles, “one for you,” he hands it to James. 

James offers the last to Teddy without saying anything. 

“Shall we?” Teddy gestures toward the bedroom with his bottle, his hand sticky with the prosecco all over the outside. The acid-sweet scent is heavy in the kitchen. James leans into the space between them and catches Teddy’s mouth in a kiss. They both still taste like his coffee. 

“I’m really fucking glad you’re with me, us.” James tells him. “You know that, right?” 

“I wouldn’t change a thing.” Teddy presses his forehead against James’s. “Not anything.”

“Okay.” James juts his chin toward the living room, the open door to the bedroom. “Let’s.” 

Lily’s on the bed, legs crossed, head tilted back as she drinks. They sit on either side of her, take coincident sips from their bottles. 

“I’m sorry.” Lily reaches over and presses one sticky fingertip to James’s nose. “For kicking you out. And for not letting you in,” she adds to Teddy. 

“It was a little rude.” James catches her finger. Teddy rests his chin on her shoulder, looking at James around the point of her nose. 

“But you wouldn’t expect anything else from me, would you?” Lily lets James draw her hand fully into his. He links their fingers together. She tilts her head so Teddy’s almost lost in her mess of red hair. 

James won’t answer her question. He never knows what to expect from her. They’ve spent their lives together, but Lily’s a mystery. “Are you okay now?” he asks instead. 

“Nah.” She drinks. Teddy and James do, too. “But I’m glad I let you back in.” 

“For the alcohol?” Teddy suggests, his free hand splipping over her shoulders and settling on James’s. Warm, comfortable. 

“Not only that.” Lily lifts her chin. “Life’s fucked up. Our lives especially, people will probably say. I don’t know. I do know I’m lucky to have you both here.” 

“We’re all lucky.” Teddy’s head lifts from Lily’s shoulder, his hand drops from James’s. 

James falls back onto the pillows, resting his bottle on his chest. “We are. When you move in, Ted, we’re going to need a bigger bed.” 

Lily’s hand falls to his thigh. Her nails dig through the denim. “I like being squished in here, though.” 

Teddy swallows a mouthful. “Am I moving in?” 

“Of course, you idiot. We don’t want to give you a chance to escape from us.” 

“Also, it’ll make everything easier. And you can get even more angry at Lily when she chucks you out.” 

“Ass.” Lily curves over and hovers over James, her eyes inches from his. “You don’t really care, do you?” 

“Not much.” James lifts his head enough to kiss her. “Teddy was sad, though. You nearly broke his heart.” 

Lily laughs. She pulls James’s wand from his pocket, waves it so all three bottles settle into the air around the bed, and then pushes Teddy onto his back. 

“Sorry Ted,” she says, and kisses him. 

They’re all full of sparkling wine, they’re full of each other. They’re really fucking lucky. James would not change a thing, not for all the money, all the stability, all the normalcy in the world.

"Fuck normal," he says. The other two, laughing, agree.


End file.
